About Giclées
MMThe Origins:
MMMWhen Jack Duganne coined the word "giclée" in 1992 for the Nash-Studios he started a new area of high class printing no longer based on pressuring ink on the media but spraying it in tiny drops on the substrate (canvas, paper). That is what the print heads of ink jet printers do. To make a severe distinction between low end and high end ink jet printers he borrowed the french word "gicler" which means to spray. In the beginning of the nineties the best print results were achieved with high-end very expensive Iris ink jet printers. The fine prints of these dye based printers which had only four colors were accepted for the first time in the history of ink jet printing by some museums. Today the printing technology has surpassed the Iris printers and there are printing devices with up to twelve colors.
MMMIn the beginning of the giclée area printing devices (ink jet priners) dominated the market. Today - having to choose from a bunch of excellent ink jet printers - the input device (camera) has become the crucial part of the giclée workflow. Professional fine art reproduction starts with camera backs. These are devices that are mounted onto a professional camera like a Hasselblad where they replace the film holder. A camera back is the digital equivalent of a wet darkroom film roll. The camera back digitizes the image and puts it on a disk. Camera backs have an extremely high resolution of some 100 or more Mega Pixels. This high resolution cannot be achieved by any kind of consumer, prosumer or professional camera. And flatbed scanners of any size are an absolute "NO, NO" in fine art reproduction. Flatbed scanners are like copy machines only that they do not output a piece of paper but a digitized file. Using a flatbed scanner means to press the face of the art work on a glass plate that gets pretty hot. In professional fine art reproduction we never touch the surface of the original painting and we avoid heat during the reproduction process. Beyond that flat bed scanners were developed to digitize flat materials like douments and maps. They have no depth of field and the operator has no control over the extremely harsh light. And flat bed scanners only have a very limited format so that bigger sized originals have to be stitched. Giclée shops with these kind of input devices are more like copy shops, they cannot produce professional results because of the limitations of the input devices. In IT language: Garbage in, garbage out.
MMMToday the giclée market is exploding and there is a lot of uncertainty about the question "What is it that makes a print an excellent giclée?".
There are four steps to producing an excellent giclée:
MMMThe process of producing a giclée has four basic steps:
1. Shooting the picture.
2. Proofing
3. Printing
4. Coating
MMStep #1: Input (shooting the picture)
MMMFor the reproduction of paintings, drawings and 3D-objects, "The Giclée Shop" uses the best input device on the market, a German Cruse Fine Art Synchron Table with a resolution of up to 1.1 Giga Pixels in 24 bit mode which is a standard mode used today for excellent output results. The Cruse scanner can also output in a 48 bit depth which produces files up o 2.2 Giga Pixels. The Cruse Fine Art Synchron table, called "the Rolls-Royce" among scanning devices by the giclée "pope" Prof. Nicholas Hellmuth (USA), is an invention that combines a world class copy stand (1,700 pounds) with a high resolution camera back, an exceptional German Schneider lens and a table that moves under the eye of the camera in synchronity with the shots of the camera. The result is excellent in color reproduction and sharpness. The "Cruse" is also the most expensive of the input devices and can be found in some museums and huge corporations. Other exellent input devices are drum scanners. In a drum scanning process the work of art is stretched over a drum, that rotates fast while a light beam reads the color information. Drum scanners have excellent results but are not as flexible as a Cruse scanner where the lab technician has control over the flow of the light on the original during the scan. At Maalea Press the lab technicians follow the light in the original and produce shodows where there are thick layers of paint. This is one of the reasons that make our giclées unique on the market.
MMStep #2: Proofing (processing the picture on the monitor and printing a proof, or "the proof on the pudding is in the eating")
MMMAlso called "image editing" or "proofing". This is the process were the captured image is viewed by the lab technician and adjusted to the original painting. In this process the image is color corrected, the highlights, shadows and midtones are refined, the image is sharpened and prepared for and sent to the printing device (high end ink je printer) and then the print is compared to the original. Does the lab technician think that the result is very good, he sends the print (the proof) to the client for a b.a.t. or imprimatur. This is the process where the client has to confirm that the final print can be done or if the proof needs some changes. B.a.t. means "bon a tirer", another french word that found entrance into the English printing vocabulary and which means good to pull, or ready for the final output (the final print). "Imprimatur" is the Latin equivalent which is mostly used in Europe and it means "it can be printed". After the b.a.t. or impimatur has been given by the client the lab technician can print the final print and the company can write the invoice.
The process of proofing includes at least one proof being part of the process BEFORE the final print is done. Proofing is substantial to the process of printing giclées.
As there is no 100% color matching a proof is necessary. We go from light to pigments, from immaterial RGB (light) to CMYK (pigments). This procedure naurally includes the loss of colors. We also go from shapeless reflective light that hits the "film" in the camera to square pixels (camera, monitor) and from there to round dots on the printer. In this process we loose sharpness which will be added manually in the proofing process.
Usually proofing is done either in a smaller e.g. letter size or a represenative strip of the original size on the final output canvas or paper. The reason for that is that the substrates (paper,canvas, etc.) are very expensive.
MMMThe proofing process demands professional skills from the lab technician. Excellent computer programms for this purpose like "Photoshop" have the whole knowledge of the printing industry built in. Some professionell shops prefer a "scientific" approach, others rely on their experience and ability to match the print to the original. "Scientific" means in this context, that the lab technician prints by checking the numbers of the colors. In the IT world all colors are broken down into red, green and blue and represented by numbers. The RGB-model was invented with the upcoming of television monitors. RGB is artificial light produced to represent an image on a monitor. But as nobody can define color today in absolute scientific modells independent from the ligh source and the reflection of the light there actually is no such thing as a "scientific" approach. The computer and printing industry spends millions of dollars every year to define and refine color models. The institution where this work is done is called "International Color Consortium" or ICC. We find the result of their work in the color input and output files that have the extension .icc (Macs) or .icm (Microsoft).
MMMHave some fun and go to a big place where TV sets are sold. They usually have a huge wall with active TV monitors running the same TV show. And although all TV sets get the same color information (absolutely the same numbers) they render the colors differently. The reason for that: there is no scientific color model that renders the same colors on every monitor. So it is up to the lab technician and that is where his experience kicks in. Even with an excellent flow of colors from the input device (the scanner) through the monitor to the printer, there is always app. 10% of manual work for the lab technician. At Maalea Press LLC where the scans and prints for "The Giclée Shop" are done, we often hear artists say that the print is better than the original.
MMStep #3: Output (Printing)
MMMAfter the image has been captured and proofed it can be printed in the final desired size. Here the image undergoes a transformation from the modern light based RGB model to the ancient printing color model which is called CMYK. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Whereas the RGB colors are made from artificial translucent light (on the monitor) the colors of the printing press are made of matter speak refective pigments or dye. While dye bases inks don't last too long, pigment based inks have a longevity of app. 100 years. The prints sold in "The Giclée Shop" are all printed with Epson's modern K3 Ultrachrome Inks. All the prints are done on environmenally friendly acidfree materials. At Maalea Press outstanding printing results are achieved because we have a little secret to get the input colors into the output device (the printer).
MMStep #4: Coating (making the print withstand light and dust and bugs)
MMMThe last step of the reproduction process is the coating. This step is applied to avoid fading of the print or molding or aging. We use the best environmentally friendly non-yellowing coating substance available. You can choose between matte, satin or glossy coatings.
