Giclee Advantages: Pigment Digital Prints

There is a wider variety of papers such as canvas and watercolor than press as giclee printing is not as fussy with substrates. The substrates used for giclee printing are from the finest paper and canvas manufacturers such as Fredrix, Sihl, Somerset and Hahnemuhle.

Different sizes can be printed on demand to accommodate the market.

While the latest giclee printers use 6 or more colors, traditional printing is 4 colors: a lot of the pigments artists choose simply cannot be reproduced. The gamut (Range of colors reproduced) is higher with giclees. Manufacturers added extra pigments such as light cyan, light magenta, to increase chromatic rendition. Regarding pigments, make sure that your giclee provider uses pigments and not dyes for printing. This is an essential component to insure lasting reproductions. Every printer has different characteristics: A measure of DPI (dots per inch) is often overrated as the only measure of quality. There are 300 DPI professional machines capable of rendering artwork of a much higher quality than a consumer level printer rated at 720 or 1,440 DPI. Ultimately, even with all the math and gamut graphs available, the true test is to observe a giclee next to the original. Use a lupe if one is available to discern any dot pattern.

Typically it is very hard for printers to reproduce all colors as saturation increases. As we go toward the edges saturation and brilliance increase and mechanical reproduction fails. Giclee printing can capture more colors. Even a 4 color Giclee printer has a better gamut than offset lithographs due to the brilliance of the pigments used. Our 8 K3 pigment color printers go beyond by adding up to 3 levels of black, light magenta and light cyan to the mix. Keep in mind that there is a limit to the gamut of giclees as well; through careful scanning and precise color correction we can produce prints with great depth.

For more information, please visit the What is a giclee page. In addition, we included a brief discussion about what makes giclee printing a great medium and why you should choose giclee for limited editions and embellished unique work.

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