What comes in, comes out...

Museum Quality Fine Art Digital (Giclee) Prints.

When I first heard about Giclee´s Prints I didn´t really understand how it worked, shoot a picture with a camera and print it, how can that be something els then everyone who owns a camera and a printer can do, I had to get it explained. It where a new technic even for me that have worked with Art and different tecnics for more than 40 years...

Okay, today it is a lot of people and companies that claim they can do "giclee´s", some even call their digital prints "lithography", but there is a huge gap in variation between a quality "giclee" (as I don´t like to call our products, because it can be misleading) and what most of the "market" today can offer. because you got to have the best tools to get the best results.

Many of the "producers " of "giclee´s" on the market focus on what paper they using, others what printers they have, but I will say 99% of them has forgot the most important part, the camera and the photo, because what comes in, comes out, that means, if you take a lousy photo, you can´t get a high-end quality print out of it.

In general there are three basic criterias that shall be fullfilled just to use the name "giclee" for a Fine Art Digital print, and that is:

1. Resolution

Any image that is to be printed as a giclee needs to be created at a resolution of no less than 300 dots per inch (DPI). In the case of a photo or conventional artwork reproduction, that means that the camera or scanner used to capture the image or scan the artwork must be able to do so at 300 DPI.

This will ensure the final print has the sharpest detail and lacks any of the fragmentation that can occur with images of a lower resolution.

2. Paper

The paper or substrate used to actually print the final piece must be of archival quality and be acid free and consists of a 100 % cotton or rag base.

3. Ink and Printer

A true giclee print is also the type of ink and printer used. The biggest contrast between a standard inkjet print and a giclee print is that giclees are printed using pigment-based inks rather than the dye-based inks found in lower-cost inkjets.

Pigment-based inks have a longer lifespan, and can last anywhere from 100 to 200 years without significant fading. The type of printer used to create giclees is usually a larger format model that specifically uses pigment-based inks and will hold around eight to 12 different colour ink cartridges. The more inks used, the more sophisticated the colour range available on final output.

But there is one thing more.

To make the best high-end "giclee´s" you need high-end equipment, you need special cameras, and now we are NOT talking about the best common DSLR cameras like Nikon, Canon, or Hasselblad and so on, but cameras or scanners made just to photograph Art with, and that's what it's all about when talking advanced digital art prints or High End Museum Quality Fine Art Digital Prints...

And that is what we have.

We have special cameras that has resoulutions between 216 megapixel up to 384 megapixels, and are made to shoot Art with, a fact that allows us to produce print sizes up to 40" x53,3" (101,6 cm x 135,39 cm) in resolutions of 300 dpi (dot per inch) witch is the standard for high quality digital prints.

With our super cameras, equipment and knowledge about shooting Art and printmaking, we can now make some of the finest quality Art prints available on the market, and the quality of our prints can easily be compared with any of the traditional technics, lithography, seriegraphy or any other printing technics.

What comes in, comes out.

We have done experiments and enlarged our prints 200 times with digital microscopes and compared our technology with traditional printing techniques such as lithography and screen printing and found that our method have a lot of great advantages, Because with our technology, you can control the printouts down to pixel size, which can be compared to someone doing etching or lithography under a very, very strong loupe.

A great advantage for the Artists that can control their workflow almost 100%, but also to guarantee a quality product for the customer who are investing in prints from their favorit artists and motives.

But there are also other elements in our workflow that give our prints an advantage, we use the best ICC profiling applications and equipment available on the market, which means that the colors match almost 100% from the original pieces (which is one of the most difficult things in the whole process), we also use the best large format printers with pigment color that last for at least one hundred years or more (properly framed or stored in archive environment.)

We also only using 100% cotton, top quality acid free papers or canvas,

(without any Optical Brightening Agents, also called OBAs. Optical Brightening Agents are artificial brighteners that deteriorate in time),

produced by some of the worlds most reputed paper manufacturer, a fact that also lead us to a sustainable high quality product.

And of course our printers also using LUCIA pigment Ink from Canon with 12 different pigment colour ink cartridges of superior quality.

To summarize, together with our high end cameras and the best equipment for ICC profiling, computers, programs, printers, ink and our long experience to work with Art, colors and print technics in general, I will claim that we have equipment and knowledge to make a world class product, beyond most of the market today.

Thank you for taking your time, hope this little explanation had help you to understand our work and this new digital technic better.

If you have any further questions about Fine Art Museum Quality Digital Prints (Giclee´s) don´t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Best regards

IAD Studios