An honest guide to the printing method that lets artists reproduce their work at museum quality — and the standards that separate a true fine art giclée from a regular inkjet print.
As any artist who sells their own original work knows, once the piece is gone, that's it. But imagine if you could reproduce your most important work on demand, often on the very same paper the original was painted on, and sell it as a high quality art print at a fraction of the cost and risk of a full print run.
That is what fine art giclée printing offers. An open or limited edition of reproductions made from your original artwork — each one as close to the original as modern printing can get — printed only when you need them.
Traditional offset litho and screen printing have their place, but for artists working in small runs and wanting museum-quality reproduction of original work, giclée is now the method of choice.
Your digital file is archived with us. Order a single print or a hundred — whenever you need them. No minimum runs, no warehousing unsold stock, no upfront outlay on an edition you haven't sold.
Made on 100% cotton and cellulose art papers with 12-colour pigment inks that carry a lightfastness of 100 years or more. These are prints built to outlast the walls they hang on.
Colour-managed ICC profiles link scanner, screen and printer so what you see is what prints. The finished result is as close to your original as modern printing will allow.
The term "giclée" was coined in the 1990s by printmaker Jack Duganne from the French for "spray". Since then the Fine Art Trade Guild has set clear minimum standards that separate a fine art giclée from an everyday inkjet print.
Scoring 6 or better on the Blue Wool Scale means your print will resist fading under normal gallery lighting for decades.
Papers and coatings sit in the neutral-to-alkaline range — so the sheet itself will not yellow, brown, or degrade the image over time.
A 12-colour LUCIA pigment ink set — including photo grey, photo cyan and photo magenta — delivers the subtlest tonal transitions and truest neutral greys.
Before a single drop of ink hits the paper, we need a digital file that captures every colour and every detail of your original. For smaller works up to A3 we use a high-end flatbed scanner. For larger pieces we photograph the work with a studio camera under controlled lighting.
Good colour management — ICC profiles linking the scanner, the studio screen, and the printer — ensures the finished print matches the original for both colour and density. Once we have that master file, it's archived with us. You can call off single prints or multiple copies any time, on any paper we stock, at any size.
Scanning & Copying Service
The quality of the scan is the single most important factor in the whole process. If you're not sure whether your file is up to printing at a particular size, or what it will look like on your chosen paper, we can help in one of two ways.
Order a proof print and you'll see exactly how the finished piece will look — on the exact paper, at a small and affordable size. Prefer not to commit to a proof? Send us your file for a free file check instead and we'll give you our honest assessment of whether it's fit for the size and media you have in mind.
Proof Prints & Free File Check
The best way to understand fine art giclée is to hold a print in your hands. Order our sample pack and see the full range of archival papers we print on — plus a calibration print so you can judge our colour work for yourself.