Differences and status: Giclee vs. Inkjet vs. darkroom prints
Mark Anderson
e.g. a long post by Charles Eicher in Feb. 1999. Today a gallery tells
me that they sell more Giclee prints than photochemical prints
(C-prints) of the same image, at the same price, in the same gallery.
Asked why, the gallery owner believes it's due to the appearance, e.g. a
'softer' image. He requests I consider submitting to him as Giclees.
What is the difference, if any, between Giclee prints and other inkjet
prints? Can Giclees be printed at home with easily available and
affordable printers, papers, inks?
If Giclees are still considered non-archival, are they worse than
C-prints? The same gallery told me that the Giclees are selling better
than Cibachromes, but it's not directly comparable because they're not
the same image.
--
Mark Anderson
DBA Riparia www.teleport.com/~andermar/
"The trouble with good ideas
is that they soon degenerate into a lot of hard work." Anon.
Jeff Novick
"Mark Anderson" <ande...@teleport.com> wrote in message
news:1evghwa.d6...@ip-209-239-211-144.pdx.jps.net...
> I've reread prior posts re the controversy b/w Giclee and other mediums,
> e.g. a long post by Charles Eicher in Feb. 1999. Today a gallery tells
> me that they sell more Giclee prints than photochemical prints
> (C-prints) of the same image, at the same price, in the same gallery.
> Asked why, the gallery owner believes it's due to the appearance, e.g. a
> 'softer' image. He requests I consider submitting to him as Giclees.
>
> What is the difference, if any, between Giclee prints and other inkjet
> prints? Can Giclees be printed at home with easily available and
> affordable printers, papers, inks?
Giclee prints are not your usual inkjet prints. They are made on very high
end printers that cost a lot of money. They are nothing like your home
printer. Their quality is very high and you can output very large sizes.
With home printers, using archival inks and papers, you can also print some
very lovely images, but, they will not be the same.
>
> If Giclees are still considered non-archival, are they worse than
> C-prints? The same gallery told me that the Giclees are selling better
> than Cibachromes, but it's not directly comparable because they're not
> the same image.
>
> --
Giclees are considered archival and have some of the best longevity ratings.
It is a lot of work preparing files for giclee printing. The end result is
quite different from Cibachromes. They are worth experimenting with for the
right images.
Jeff
Todd Maurer
www.lightroom.com will give you a deal on the file prep for your first order.
That site also has information on the process.
I got a giclee 16x20 of the same image that I already had a 16x20 Ilfachrome
(ciba) print. The image I selected turned out better than the Ilfachrome
print. As I was building inventory for a show I stock giclees. Most turned out
better then Ilfachrome. Two were simply different by my tastes and my wife's.
One sunset just didn't come out right so we passed on it. The water color paper
is definately a different feel than the high gloss of Ilfachrome classis.
Giclee can be printed onto just about any paper or surface. The archival
property only comes with Arches Cold Press which is a textured paper.
Note that a 16x20 requires nearly a 150MB file to print at full 150MB
resolution.
Todd
Richard Knoppow
Giclee is a French word that means squirt or spray. It also has a
sexual connotation.
Giclee is no more than an art gallery term for an inkjet print. Most
really high quality Giclee prints are made using Iris printers. These
were originally used for soft proofing digital graphics files for
photomechanical reproduction. Early Iris ink sets were anything but
archival, some fading with days when exposed to light. There are now
pigmented ink sets which have far longer lives than the old dye inks.
Modern pigmented inks have estimated lifetimes of perhaps a century
although the life depends on display or storage conditions and the
material on which the print is made.
Iris printers can print on a very wide variety of materials. I've
seen Giclee on canvas and verious watercolor papers. Again, the
material can have a profound effect on lifetime.
Some Giclee prints are mixed media being printed on lets say canvas,
with oil or acrylic paints added by hand.
I would be skeptical of any Giclee print without knowing exactly
what ink set was used to make it and exactly whan sort of material it
was printed on.
In principle a Giclee can be made on any inkjet printer but most of
he gallery stuff is done on Iris machines or similar large printers.
I am not suprized that Giclee sells more prints than Ciba-Ilfo-
chrome. For one thing its a little exotic. Its not quite "just a
photograph". Plus the term covers a lot of territory. As I pointed out
many Giclee's include some hand work. This gives them the illustion of
being more nearly conventional works of art and not just mass produced
photographs.
I suspect than many gallery customers do not quite understand what
they are and gallery owners are not about to wide them up. If I say
its just a fancy computer print, not fundamentally different from what
you can do at home, it would take a lot of steam out despite the fact
that an Iris printer is a very expensive item. Nonetheless, its just
an inkjet print when its at home.
There is a desire for uniqueness, or at least limited replication,
among collectors so a hand-created painting is always of interest.
Anything which is capable of multiple reproduction is looked at with
some disfavor. So even lithographs are more valuable if the original
stone was destroyed after the edition was pulled. This desire for
something unique, or at least rare, held back photography from being
considered as "investment" grade art until other, conventional, forms
became so expensive as to put them beyond the reach of any but the
wealthiest individuals and corporations. Giclee is by nature a mass
reproducable medium but, by hand work on individual prints and cleaver
marketing they have been made to seem other than they are.
I should make clear that I have no objection to any medium being
considered art but I do have an objection to the somewhat misleading
use of an exotic term mainly for promotion of sales.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, Ca.
dick...@ix.netcom.com
Jimmy Peguet
> Giclee is a French word that means squirt or spray. It also has a
> sexual connotation.
> Giclee is no more than an art gallery term for an inkjet print. Most
> really high quality Giclee prints are made using Iris printers.
Short information (in french) about Iris prints :
http://www.galerie-photo.com/haze_tirage_iris_fine_art.html
Jimmy
Tom
(according to the program) Iris printers. The images were maybe 20 x 28
inches and the paper looked like watercolor paper. It was a major
departure from anything he had done before.
Richard's comments are very helpful with the context for this.
Tom
"Richard Knoppow" <dick...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:3b3589a7...@news.mindspring.com...
Jeff Novick
Just to clarify, Iris was the name of the brand of printer that popularized
the Giclee type of printing. I believe it is now defunct and other brands
of printers have come forth with new and better technology. Many people
keep calling Giclee prints, 'Iris' prints, but this is incorrect
terminology. I would think that most Giclee printers use archival ink and
paper sets as this is what gives it a presence in the market place and why
galleries and museums are now actively showing and collecting them.
Jeff
"Richard Knoppow" <dick...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:3b3589a7...@news.mindspring.com...
Richard Knoppow
>Richard,
>
>Just to clarify, Iris was the name of the brand of printer that popularized
>the Giclee type of printing. I believe it is now defunct and other brands
>of printers have come forth with new and better technology. Many people
>keep calling Giclee prints, 'Iris' prints, but this is incorrect
>terminology. I would think that most Giclee printers use archival ink and
>paper sets as this is what gives it a presence in the market place and why
>galleries and museums are now actively showing and collecting them.
>
>Jeff
>
I don't know what the current status of Iris is, a guess a web
search would answer that. I did not mean to imply that only Iris
printers could be or are used for Giclee, any high quality printer can
be used.
Long lived ink sets for inkjet printers are rather recent, certainly
much more so than Giclee as an art medium. The connotation that
"Giclee" automatically means an archival print is a dangerous
assumption for the buyer/collector. Again, its necessary to know what
inks were used and the material. In many cases, I doubt if any testing
has been done, so claims of "archival" quality may be without any
substantiation.
Of course something of the sort can also be said of photographic
prints. Color especially is often not very long lived, including
Ilfochrome/Cibachrome. Henry Wilhelm's testing indicates a
substantially shorter life than Ilford claims. OTOH, some modern
pigment prints (what used to be called Carbon prints) have very long
lasting images, perhaps a couple of centuries. In principle, an inkjet
print using similar pigments should be as long lasting, provided there
in nothing in the medium to attack the pigment.
I am just a little disturbed at the attitude of casually claiming
that Giclee is the newest and latest and is head and shoulders
superior to all challengers. In fact, its just another medium for
artists to work with.
Dewayne Hight
used. I have a local printer that uses a Miyaki(sp) printer that is built
around an Epson engine that uses Epson six color pigment inks. He prints
graphics that are applied to the sides of buses that are still going strong
after six months of daily exposure to California sun. He does apply a UV
coating to them.
I have some of the water color paper and even my dye prints seem to last
longer with it. He has some of his test prints that are still bright after a
year in his window using pigment inks. The same inks are available in the
high-end Epson printers
Many of the ink manufacturers have done testing for longevity on the pigment
inks and found expected lives of 200+ years using the same exposure tests as
the photographic people use. In fact some of the resin based photo papers
have had failures in five years or less, because of their environment.
When having prints made be sure the inks are the pigment type and the papers
are rated as archival.
Great strides have been made since the first Iris prints. The printer my
friend uses can print 54" wide by 30 or so feet(limited by roll length) in
six colors. Quite a bit larger and more durable than the 20" X 30" B&W Iris
prints just a few years ago.
If you want to have a limited run of a print just delete the file and
destroy the negative or the original digital file.
dewayne
Mark Anderson
>I did not mean to imply that only Iris
> printers could be or are used for Giclee, any high quality printer can
> be used.
OK, so are there no copyright problems with claiming something is a
Giclee?
If you didn't intend to print images larger than 11x14, is anything
feasible for the individual artist to own and use for archival printing
on archival papers and that can be as properly claimed to be a Giclee
print as any other?
Are Giclees an appropriate medium for black and white?
Joseph O'Neil
Anderson) wrote:
>If you didn't intend to print images larger than 11x14, is anything
>feasible for the individual artist to own and use for archival printing
>on archival papers and that can be as properly claimed to be a Giclee
>print as any other?
You are better to send it off to get doen. I look briefly t
soem high end printers,a nd the costs woudl floor you. Not even just
the printer itself, but the cost of the ink dye packs is incredible.
Secondly, it takes a lot of work to calibrate your monitor to
match your scanner and printer. Once you get it done, great, but you
could spend hours setting it up. So, unless you are going to poum p a
pile of prints out, better to send it off to a good pro lab.
>Are Giclees an appropriate medium for black and white?
Actually, I don't think so, not just form seeing them in
person, but form what many others *seem* to think as well.
For example, I was at the local photo store here that carries
a huge supply fo dark room items, and they notied that while sales of
colour items for the wet darkroom have died right off, replaced by
computer supplies for coloru printing, the traditional B&W darkroom
sales are just as storng as ever, and - this is the important part -
not just amoung students, but amoung professional photographers.
So when the guys and gals who earn their living off the
craft are stil using traditional B&W wet darkroom setup over
computerized B&W work, then you know for sure the wet darkroom B&W
look still has the advantage.
joe
Todd Maurer
using fancy terms for markeeting. :^) Sepia comes to mind. An pat on the
back to the first reply that can tell us where sepia comes from without
referring the a dictionary. Warm and cold blacks? Why not brown and blue
blacks?
On one hand I see the point here. I first heard of giclee in Thomas Kincaid
gallery on Maui. The reproductions of Kincaid's work were gorgious. I never
dreamed that the same process could apply to photography. In that setting,
two things were clear. No this wasn't an original. Yes the marketing was
very slick. However when asked the sales personel could explain the process.
On the other hand to descripe the process as fancy inkjet prints doesn't do
the process much justice. (Though I guess I could use an ink jet printer and
call it giclee...) Most ink jet on paper combinations are not rated in
decades of life. Most ink jets do not produce anything wider than 8.5
inches. Most ink jet printers will not print a quality print on as wide a
range of surfaces.
Not sure what the replier below means be artifacts, though I understand the
term. It is not a necessity the giclee print exhibit artifacts. If they do,
then someone didn't do his job. Perhaps the image doesn't lend itself to the
digital process. Banding is one artifact that comes to mind in some images.
If banding can't be avoided then that image probably shouldn't be used. There
I'd say the person who failed is the artist or marketeer that applied the
wrong technology to the image. Overuse of the unsharp mask will cause
artifacts. A digital process can't save bad art such as a poorly focused
image. Perhaps the original scan was too small for the size print made. A
30x40 print requires a 400MB file to print a full resolution 300 dpi print..
Not many amatures today have their own equipment that can make such a scan
from even 4x5 inche originals, let alone the system to manage the file through
image editting software. 35mm gets a small leg up in that there are
specialized high density scans in terms of dpi for that format. But even
those don't yield enough information for a large full resolution print.
Good art beats good technology every time. A medium format photographer
rightfully won first place in the fair I was in recently. He only sells large
prints; 16x20 was the smallest thing on sale. I could step up to the prints
and see the loss of sharpness because of the smaller format, but his subjects
were wonderfully represented.
So I guess where we all agree is the giclee or fancy ink jets have a place as
one final medium for photography. It has it's faults. It has it's
advantages. Whether to use it up to the choice photographer based on what the
photographer want the final image to look like. Giclee used as a fancy term
to hide the fact that it is a digital process is misleading. My booth has an
8.5x11 explaination of what Giclee is and what I exploit from the digital
process. For anyone who cares to see the difference I have a proof book with
side by side comparisions of 8x10 giclee and 8x10 Ilfachrome. That way
customers can see if I've moved any pyramids. ;)
Todd
Gregory Blank wrote:
> Once again Richard a great post,...my thoughts precisely. I saw some
> "Giclee" prints at a recent
> show of work by prominate Baltimore photographers recently and was rather
> disappointed both
> subject matter (in general) and image quality among the "giclee"images.
> Lots of artifacts which it appeared be a result of the ink jet used. For
> $500.00 and the name appearing on the image I would not have thought to
> combine the two.
>
> I think it a big mistake that Dye transfer is now dyfunct.
> All the Best
> Greg
>
> In article <3b3589a7...@news.mindspring.com>, dick...@ix.netcom.com
> wrote:
>
> I should make clear that I have no objection to any medium being
> considered art but I do have an objection to the somewhat misleading
> use of an exotic term mainly for promotion of sales.
>
> Richard Knoppow
> Los Angeles, Ca.
> dick...@ix.netcom.com
>
> --
> Gregory W.Blank Photography
> P.O. Box 726
> Finksburg, MD. 21048
> Check out my website http://members.bellatlantic.net/~gblank
Joshua Putnam
mau...@ameritech.net writes:
>On the other hand to descripe the process as fancy inkjet prints doesn't do
>the process much justice. (Though I guess I could use an ink jet printer and
>call it giclee...) Most ink jet on paper combinations are not rated in
>decades of life. Most ink jets do not produce anything wider than 8.5
>inches. Most ink jet printers will not print a quality print on as wide a
>range of surfaces.
That's all true, applied to most ink jet printers, but something
as humble as an Epson 3000 with pigmented inks will print 50-100
year images, 17x22 inches, on Arches paper or canvas cloth or
many other media. And certainly will produce results at least as
aesthetically pleasing as much of what is sold as Giclee art.
--
jo...@wolfenet.com is Joshua Putnam
http://www.phred.org/~josh/
JustaPawn
IRIS is Giclee.
Inkjet is Giclee.
Fancy French name for "To Spray".
Fancier machine, better inks. My printer uses a ColorScan, 8-heads (2 each of
CMYK) to watercolor paper, 34" x 46". My Epson 3000 will print 13" x 19" but I
wouldn't sell one of the prints as art, though many do. I understand there are
4-color monochrome, carbon-based inksets and software (Epson software sucks) to
turn the 3000 into a fineart printer.
Madjid
>
> RE: Exotic terms and marketing. Doubt we could ever accuse photographers of
> using fancy terms for markeeting. :^) Sepia comes to mind. An pat on the
> back to the first reply that can tell us where sepia comes from without
> referring the a dictionary. Warm and cold blacks? Why not brown and blue
> blacks?
I have an unfair advantage here, I speak French...
Sepia is the Frech name for cuttlefish. The "sepia" color was initially
made from the dried ink sac of the beast.
Sandor Mathe
Todd Maurer wrote:
>
> RE: Exotic terms and marketing. Doubt we could ever accuse photographers of
> using fancy terms for markeeting. :^) Sepia comes to mind. An pat on the
> back to the first reply that can tell us where sepia comes from without
> referring the a dictionary. Warm and cold blacks? Why not brown and blue
> blacks?
Because brown and warm mean different things and cold and blue mean different
things. Warm and cold are more generic, a reddish-black, yellowish-black and
orange-black are all warm, A greenish-black, purpleish-black are both cold.
Terms invented for marketing are one thing, creating a standardized term
with a solid definition for proper identification is a necessary and valuable
process.
--
Sandor Mathe
Mark Anderson
>My printer uses a ColorScan, 8-heads (2 each of
> CMYK) to watercolor paper, 34" x 46".
What printer is that? And approximate cost?
JustaPawn
T.
Mark Anderson
> By "my printer" I meant my output house. I think its $10,000 or more.
Point well taken.
thc
(4th edition, 2000, Houghton Mifflin Company):
sepia - noun, 1a. A dark brown ink or pigment originally prepared from the
secretion of the cuttlefish. b. A drawing or picture done in this pigment.
c. A photograph in a brown tint. 2. A dark greyish yellow brown to dark or
moderate olive brown. - adjective, 1. Of the color sepia. 2. Done or made in
sepia.
from Middle English, cuttlefish,
from Latin sepia, cuttlefish, ink,
from Greek sepia, cuttlefish;
perhaps akin to sepein, to make rotten.
"Madjid" <m...@NoSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:3B391EF1...@NoSPAM.com...
Ron Todd
Mark Anderson wrote:
...
> Are Giclees an appropriate medium for black and white?
...
FWIW you might want to look into the Piezography product, shades of gray
ink cartridges for an Epson printer plus a photoshop driver.
YMMV