What is the difference?

What is a giclée print?

Giclée printing is an adaption of high resolution inkjet technology. The term giclée was first coined in the early 1990s and has largely fallen out of use in favor of simpler descriptive terms such as archival pigment ink prints.

Why pigment ink prints?

Using pigment inks on acid and lignin free cotton, and other alpha-cellulose based papers, offers the greatest longevity of any readily available photographic color printing process. When mounted under UV protective glass, testing has shown prints can have expected longevity of over 200 years. Even when mounted in less ideal circumstances, prints should last several decades without visible signs of fading or yellowing.

This type of printing also allows for the use of the largest range of media and surfaces: smooth and textured cotton rag fine art, etching, and watercolor papers, glossy and semi-glossy photo papers, canvas, and translucent materials for back lit photographic displays. Like other inkjet technologies, a large range of print sizes is available: from 4 x 6 inches to 60 inches by 100 feet.

The color gamut (range of hues that can be accurately reproduced) is wide, meaning that there is less chance of a color captured by the camera resulting in a color shift on the final print. Using fully calibrated display devices at one end and finely-tuned paper profiles at the other, allows the creation of prints that are very consistent – a print made one day will look almost identical to one made of the same image on another day, even months or years later.

Are there any disadvantages? Apart from the high costs of the ink and fine papers, there are two possible disadvantages on some glossy and semi-glossy paper (lustre, satin, pearl, and photo matte). Gloss differential can occur to varying degrees. Gloss differential is the difference in the apparent sheen of areas where ink is laid down and areas the white areas of an image where no ink is printed. The other potential minor problem is bronzing: the appearance of a slight copper or bronze in black inked areas when viewed from certain acute angles.

Other types of print

Lightjet prints probably come closest, in terms of quality and resolution, to archival inkjet printing. The process uses laser light to expose photographic paper, which is then developed using the standard Kodak RA-4 wet chemical process. Some photographers prefer the look of prints made this way, because the photographic dyes are embedded in the layers of the surface, which can give a more three-dimensional appearance.

Lightjet prints have about one quarter of the longevity of pigmented inkjet prints, a smaller color gamut, can’t quite create as deep a black, and the range of types of paper available is extremely limited.

Most consumer grade inkjet printers use dye based ink and have a limited number ink colors. The least expensive dye based inkjets often have only cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). Most come with two blacks; a mat black for text printing and a glossy ‘photo’ black. With the correct paper selection they can produce excellent prints with an even greater vibrancy and deeper blacks than pigment inks. There is also no possibility of gloss differential or bronzing, because the inks sink deeply into the paper coating. There were a small number of papers specially developed that increased the longevity of these prints almost to the levels of those of pigment inks. Unfortunately, papers with a ‘swellable’ coating have largely disappeared from the marketplace. Dye ink prints on standard microporous coated papers are very prone to light damage and can fade very quickly.

The C-type prints made on the large printing lab machines, often seen in Walmart and Costco stores, are good quality prints, and especially in small sizes such as 5 x 7 or 4 x 6 inches, can’t be beaten for price. Like Lightjet printing, the development is Kodak’s RA-4 wet chemical process, but unlike Lightjet, exposure is done using tungsten or LED lighting. The resolution isn’t as good and inconsistencies can occur between print runs. Depending on freshness of the chemicals and how often the machines are calibrated, prints made at one time of day can differ noticeably from those made at another time.

Dye sublimation prints are made using a ribbon of ink and a heat process on special paper. Prints made using this process can be extremely good and have continuous tones, unlike the microscopic dots used by inkjet printers. There are two major disadvantages: the prints are typically small, often 4 x 6 inches and only very rarely up to 8 x 12 inches; and there is no choice of paper surfaces. If you like small prints with a soft gloss surface, then dye-sub might be for you.

Although color laser printers produce faster prints than inkjets, the quality and resolution isn’t up to that of other photographic printing solutions. Laser printing is good for times when ultra high quality isn’t needed and when volumes up to a few hundred sheets are required. For larger volumes, commercial offset printing is better both in terms of speed and cost.

For black and white printing, provided you do not need very large prints, there are several processes that exceed archival pigment ink printing in terms of longevity, tonal graduation, dynamic range, and resolution.

Brian Arthur, January 2013