Giclee prints, are they essential?

Granty_

Granty_

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James
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Hi,

Someone has just brought to my attention about Giclee prints.

This guy owns a gallery and suggests if I want to be serious about selling my images then Giclee is the way to go.

I have done some searching about and from what I can figure its just a posh term from ink-jet but the prints are going to last a lot longer.

I currently use DSCL which are great and thought the quality was excellent, using glicee in future would mean I'd have to ramp my prices up quite substantially?

Anyone got any ideas/views on this matter?

Thanks,

James
 
For true exhibition prints, I was always led to believe that the /true/ exhibition standard is a c-type print from chromia LED projectors onto standard silver based photographic paper, then developed as per the old film days. It's not *too* expensive either, happily, and as much as I love dscl for commercial work, c-type prints will always blow it out of the water, and then some :)
 
POAH said:
giclee is just a poncy name for ink jet
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Except the way we sell them is on a range of excellent acid free papers using pigment based inks. Done properly, they are stunning. The devil is in the detail
 
I think in real terms Giclee is more to do with high quality fine art printing using archival quality inks and paper/canvas, than just a poncy name for inkjet printing.

Neither the printers, inks or papers are cheap. But I guess you get what you pay for.
 
Thanks - Would it not be better to use C-Type as Giclee is only 256 colours?
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Well, unless you work with 16 bit files, that's all your files have anyway.

8 Bit files, or 2 to the 8th power have 256 steps - but you have three channels, red, green and blue, which gives 2 to the 24th power or 16.7 million (unless you are doing B&W!!!)

A few of the newest 12 colour inkjet printer support native 16 bit colour - and have a very wide colour gamut, so you can get both a bigger tonal range and bigger colour range.

However, back here in the real world, unless you are a fine art photographer going for the collectors market, you're not going to gain much.

The main subect that can be better on inkjet is high key, white background shots. With inkjet you start with a white paper than you add ink. In C type photographic the base white is "grayer" due to the dyes etc in the paper. However, on a glossy surface you get "bronzing" where the transition of ink of the subject as aposed to the background which has no ink - though HP printers get round this by adding a glosser so there is something on all bits of the paper.

Giclee prints are a great term to use on your price lists - inkjet sounds like its off a £70 printer from PC World!

It also usually refers to prints done on art paper rather than gloss or satin photographic...

It all boils down down to the skill of the person using the equipment - in the capture side, if you used the same camera as your hero photographer, would your work be as good as theirs??? No (though many think it will!!!)
Same with printers.
We use the same printer as they have in many Boots or ASDA, yet what we print looks quite different.
Buy an Epson or Canon, or HP. Profile it correctly, then use the correct profile in the correct way and your output will look far better than the same printer left of the default auto settings!
 
POAH said:
so an inkjet print on matt paper then :LOL:
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Nope, its a pigment based print on an acid free substrate, there are a lot of choices of paper/rag. The entire point of the process is to make something that looks good today, and continues to look good in the future

Tell you what - go print a print with standard injet ink, on nice matt paper, and cover half of it in a book, and leave the book and print on your windowsill for a few weeks - you will then see exactly why the choice of paper and pigment is a big deal

It doesn't matter a hoot if the print is generated with a inkjet, a darkroom, or anything else.. what matters to me is the final result. Does it look great, and does it continue to look great over the years...
 
... and then remember to wear cotton gloves when touching the print - and acid free archival mount board and framed behind UV inhibiting glass (or polycarb as many suggest).
 
Sorry if this is slightly off topic but since we are talking about archival qualities, does anybody know how archival dscl prints are?
 
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This is the way I see it - what is photography about?

- putting images on hard drives and sharing them on facebook?
- getting a stunning print on a wall or in an album or in an exhibition?

For me its about the image, and that in my mind needs preserving, is something to be cherished, its something important. I dont understand photographers that obsess about pixel counts, and then never print anything... And printing something is a very important step in the image making process. So if you obsess about IQ, pixel counts and all the other things on your pricy camera, its worth equally obsessing about the quality and qualities of your prints
 
thanks for the link sam, that was just what i was looking for.

sounds good to me richard.

Over the past six months I have been printing plenty. There is another huge bonus that comes from printing and that is it massively improves your photographic ability, in my opinion!

I print mainly at 16x12 and although that isnt huge it is big enough to show you the technical errors you may have. I have always had a tripod but only recently realise how important they are. There are many other reasons but I believe getting images printed has changed my photography.

going back to giclee printing, I still cant work out exactly what it is. If, for example, DSCL use archival paper and archival ink then is that 'giclee' standard, or am i missing something?
 
I use pigment ink and have used many many papers 100% cotton, bamboo, sugar cane, plup, fibre so stop trying to teach me how to suck eggs.

oh and epson premium photo gloss has a longer life rating naked compared to epson ultra smooth art paper ;)



Richard King said:
Nope, its a pigment based print on an acid free substrate, there are a lot of choices of paper/rag. The entire point of the process is to make something that looks good today, and continues to look good in the future

Tell you what - go print a print with standard injet ink, on nice matt paper, and cover half of it in a book, and leave the book and print on your windowsill for a few weeks - you will then see exactly why the choice of paper and pigment is a big deal

It doesn't matter a hoot if the print is generated with a inkjet, a darkroom, or anything else.. what matters to me is the final result. Does it look great, and does it continue to look great over the years...
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So is the term 'giclee' just a fancy name for any inkjet print that uses a pigment based ink (which is now very common) and an acid free archival paper? (which almost any decent paper is)

I have searched the internet a few times in recent months to try and get a firm grasp of what 'giclee' is. I found this explanation on a forum and although it seems reasonable I have no idea how true it is. Have a read and let me know what you think




[[OK, this is the origin of the term "Giclee" as it applies to "fine art" printing.

The Iris continous inkjet printer was originally a proofing device for the printing industry. Artists and photographers saw its potential as an output device for quality digital photo output. Early efforts were aimed at developing drivers and inks that would give the levels of quality and permanence lacking in the initial printers.

As the quality improved, an "Iris" became the ne plus ultra of digital output. However, disaster struck with the introduction of the Epson Sylus Photo. Here was a printer that gave stunning results (albeit limited to 8.5x11") for only a couple of hundred dollars. It was only a matter of time before Epson brought out larger format printers that enterprising people began using to compete with Iris output.

Iris owners banded together in a fine art printing association and decided that to protect their considerable investment in their printers they needed to distinguish themselves from the rest of the inkjet rabble. Thus was born the term "Giclee".

Large sums were spent promoting Giclee prints as being the finest print possible and that a print could not be called a Giclee unless it had been produced on an Iris. I believe they went so far as to trademark the name so as to have the ability to legally enforce the restrictions on its usage.

The fact is that Epson ( and Canon) have passed by Iris in quality , speed, reliability and price. Permanence equals or exceeds Iris depending on whose lies ( or wild guesses) you believe.

By the way Iris inks were originally all dye inks and great effort was put into their development but since they are 4 color printers they just do not have the gamut available that the latest Epson,Canon and even HP printers posess. With regards to image quality, if you loupe an Iris against an Epson 10000, 9600,9500,7600,7500,9000, or 7000, you will note the avantage goes to the Epson. Most people have never done this because Iris prints cost so much.

Thus the term Giclee is actually a shameless marketing ploy to preserve the dwindling market for enormously expensive prints made on slow, unreliable and outmoded printers.]]
 
you'll find that the lab that started it all - Nash Editions (who is the Nash from Crossby, Stills, Nash and Young!) used the iris - and cut bits off to make it work - now use Epsons

It's not the machine - it's the skill of the operators - that make the difference...
... again just like the person who Buys a D3 and thinks it will make them a better photographer...
 
Very interesting discussion, and I'd be interested Granty to hear what you ended up choosing to do.
I'm also in the process of selecting how to get my images printed, and it depends on the market I'm selling to. Up till now, for weddings and portraiture, I've used DS Colour Labs who use Fuji Professional Paper and Fuji Frontier Printers. There's no data on how archival these products are, I haven't even been able to find out if the paper is acid free (this is what some pros use as the definition of archival, given there's no actual standard), although I have emailed Fuji to ask about their paper. I suspect these are not their best papers, since they do have a specific archival range, see http://fujifilm.co.uk/professional/prolabs/main/fujicolorcrystalarchivepromp.html

These archival papers are reviewed here: http://www.wilhelm-research.com/ist/WIR_IST_2007_03_HW.pdf
They are given 40 years under normal glass (i.e. not special UV resistant glass, which gives jsut 10 years more). So how long would the normal Fuji Papers last, i.e. not the Archival ones? Who knows? But I do know they are widely used, including by Photobox as well, who are a cheap mass-market online photo company. A few years back I took one of their photos, covered half of it, and left it on a windowsill in direct sunlight (except there was double glazed glass between the sun and the image). There was no fading over the 4-6 months I left it there, which is impressive. So if you take that paper and frame it behind glass as well, and hang it on a wall in your house where it's not exposed to a lot of direct sunlight (i.e. probably almost any wall), then there's a lot of protection from UV (which appears to be what does the damage). So to summarise, the standard (non-Archival) Professional Fuji paper used by DS COlour Labs and Photobox are probably going to be fantastic for decades.
But, I've also started doing 'fine art' landscape prints, and people's expectations may be higher in this market. So I have researched where I can get better prints. According to the Wilhelm Research Paper, certain HP printers and ink are best (life of more than 200 years behind glass befor enoticeable fading occurs), but I can't find an online professional printer offering these. If anyone knows of one please post it here.

The best I can find are the ones that use Fuji Archival paper. DS Colour Labs use this but only for Pearl prints (which only works well with B&W and saturated-colour prints), and they are very reasonable as usual. Peak Imaging are more expensive but offer a much wider range of Fuji Archival papers - I will email DS Colour Labs to see if they will increase their range too. Loxley Colour also use the Fuji Archival papers, and are also expensive.
So to summarise this bit, there are some options for Archival Papers which some people out there may wish to consider.

As far as giclee prints go, it feels to me more like a fashionable word than a marker of actual quality.
 
Why not simply call it a "Fine Art Print"
 
Chris - you are mixing up two printing tecniques.

You ask about normal fuji paper - Fuji Chrystal Archive is the name for all their silver halide paper - there are a number of different ones - pro labs most often use DPII, which has a thicker base, slightly higher silver content, and a "do not copy" watermark on the back. Asking about it being "acid free" is not valid.

That is unless you are mounting the photo onto board of putting behind a mat - as the mountboard must be acid free.

The archival life of inkjet (or giclee) prints varies depending on both the printer (and inks) used and the paper used. Giclee standards specify the weight of paper used along with the pH.

Most importantly your end customers do inkjet prints on £80 printers they have bought from PC World, you sell Giclee prints produced on printers that cost thousands, operated by skilled people and are worth so much more....

You'll find little difference between the life of prints on art paper made on HP, Canon or Epson . Canvas prints from Epson cant be heat laminated, but HP and Canon can.

You must also remember that the tests run by the Willem institute are accelerated so may, or may not be accurate.
 
Thanks for this Sam.
Is the idea with the acid issue that the photographic paper and any touching surfaces must all be acid-free to minimise discoloration? My GCSE chemistry fails me! If so, do you know if Fuji's silver halide paper is acid-free? What I'm asking is, if I want a good archival photo print, what are my options?
 
ChrisRJones said:
Thanks for this Sam.
Is the idea with the acid issue that the photographic paper and any touching surfaces must all be acid-free to minimise discoloration? My GCSE chemistry fails me! If so, do you know if Fuji's silver halide paper is acid-free? What I'm asking is, if I want a good archival photo print, what are my options?
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pigment ink on a decent paper will outlast the prints you get from photobox, DSCL etc according to Wilhelm Imaging Research.
 
If I were targeting the "art" market I would promote giclee on hahnamule paper. They also look quite different to photo prints.

Have a look at Wilhelm Imaging Research - they tell you everything you need to know (and loads you don't)
 
yeah short on dmax and saturation (for cotton papers) lol
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You could always try potato cuts!
 
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