What is giclee printing all about?
Giclee printing has undergone quite an evolution since its inception by Harvest Productions and Nash Editions in 1989. The method of giclee reproduction they pioneered relied upon the IRIS 3047 printer which was originally intended for use as a prepress machine designed to produce proofs for lithographic print houses. Oddly enough, this printer that was designed to aid the lithographic presses ended up capturing the majority of the art market rendering them obsolete for art reproduction. Before the release of this machine artists and publishers who wished to reproduce and distribute their art were forced to use the most suitable method available, lithography.
Although this process offers an extremely low unit cost it also usually requires an order minimum of at least 500 prints. This means that artists and publishers are forced to both saturate their markets and reduce their unit price due to oversized edition sizes. The other option is to discard the majority of their print run to keep edition sizes low and unit prices high. In addition, artists and publishers are unable to test their markets by releasing one print of a few images and then producing the images that received a good response. Besides the waste of requiring large quantity runs, lithography is also inhibited by its inability to reproduce prints on canvas or thick watercolor paper. In addition to these drawbacks lithography was also incapable of producing a product that could accurately translate the vivid color and subtle details of an original into a reproduction. By poorly reproducing art on substrates intended for the décor marketplace and not allowing artists and publishers to test consumer response to different images and therefore requiring a much larger risk on the part of publishers and artists, few decided to reproduce their art and focused instead on selling their originals.
All that changed with the flexibility and fine art quality that giclee printing brought to photographers, artists, and publishers alike. Beginning with the IRIS and now including various other large format printers using micro-piezo technology the quality and longevity fundamentally vital to a viable reproduction in the art market can be achieved on demand. Because the technology now allows for a single print to be produced at no more than the unit cost of 100, it has become much easier for artists and publishers to determining the viability of a product in the giclee marketplace with very little risk. This method of digital printmaking suffers from none of the short comings of lithography and provides artists and publishers with the flexibility necessary to test the market’s response to their images as well as provide reproductions on canvas, heavy watercolor paper, and fine art paper.
Giclee printing is all about this combination of the evolution of on-demand technology and high quality supplies that support an image’s obtainable quality as well as promote the longevity now mandatory of products in the fine art marketplace.
Author: Justin A. Doe
Date Published: March 8, 2005
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