What-is-a-Giclee

WHAT IS A GICLEE PRINT?

Giclee, is French for "fine spray" and is the highest quality print available today and signifies

to the buyer that the process and materials used to create the print were intended for the fine

art market. No printing film or plates are involved in the process, but instead, the image is

scanned directly from the artist's original work and is stored digitally in a computer. Then, in a normal production process, precise computer calculations would control four to six ink jets that together produce 512 shades of dense ink. However, opposed to the norm, Richard F. Rose giclee's are created through state-of-the-art technology where twelve ink jets are employed, giving the ability to create innumerable shades of color.

Giclee reproduction is created by tiny jets spraying more than 4 million droplets per second of

water-based printing ink onto a sheet of fine paper or canvas that is spinning on a drum at 250 inches per second. Each droplet is approximately three pico liters in volume, a size smaller then a red blood cell! Because there is no visable dot screen pattern the resulting image has all of the subtle tonalities of the original art. A museum-quality art print emerges, vivid and smooth, with the feel of a watercolor and the look of a serigraph or original lithograph. Giclees are produced one at a time. Depending upon their size, this intricate printing process can take up to an hour or more for each print. Giclee prints can also be known as Iris prints.

The quality of today's giclee print process rivals traditional silver-halide and gelatin printing

process commonly found on fine art prints in museums, art galleries and photographic galleries. To add to the quality of a giclee printed on canvas, brush strokes can be applied by painting on a thick layer of transparent acrylic which gives the giclee dimensional brush strokes and also protect the print.