What is a Giclee?

A giclee (zhee-CLAY) is an individually produced, high resolution, high fidelity reproduction done on a special large format printer. Giclees are produced from digital scans of existing artwork.

Giclees can be printed on any number of media including watercolor paper and canvas. Giclees are superior to traditional lithography in several ways. The colors are brighter, last longer, and are so high-resolution that are virtually continuous tone, rather than tiny dots. The range, or “gamut” of color for giclees is far beyond that of lithography.

Lithography uses tiny dots of four colors- cyan, magenta, yellow and black- to fool the eye into seeing various hues and shades. Giclees use inkjet technology, but far more sophisticated than your desktop printer, with lightfast inks and finer, more numerous, replaceable print heads.

In addition, Giclees are produced directly from a digital file, saving generations of detail-robbing negatives and printing plates, as with traditional printing.

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