Giclée Fine Art Prints

Iris/Giclée (pronounced "zhee-clay") reproductions were originally developed as a plateless method of fine art printing. The word Giclée is French for "to spray " or "to sputter". An Iris/Giclée print is the highest quality print available today. When the process is done correctly, it consists of a one-to-one high-quality scan of the original, an Iris printer, and an ICC (International Color Consortium) color matching software package. The IRIS printer sprays droplets of ink the size of a human red blood cell onto fine art stock to create prints that cannot be duplicated by other printing techniques. Because there is no visible dot screen pattern, the resulting image has all of the subtle tonalities of the original art. This produces exceptional museum quality prints.

 The technology provides incredible detail and brilliant color. The apparent resolution (DPI or dots per inch) is actually higher than traditional lithography (1800 DPI for Giclée as opposed to 1200DPI for lithographs) which shows crisp contrast with rich, intense color. 

 The most important fact to remember is that all color fades. As far as Giclée prints are concerned, some original watercolors will fade faster than a well-made Giclée. Unlike lithographs and serigraphs, Giclées have undergone extensive, third-party fade-testing. While the predicted display life depends on many variables, Giclée prints can last as long as 35 to 75 years before noticeable fading begins.

 Giclées are being embraced by dozens of museums around the world, including New York's Metropolitan Museum, the National Museum of Mexico, the Corcoran in Washington, DC, the High Museum in Atlanta, the British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.