What is a "giclée" print ... really?

ChrisGalway · Mar 28, 2025

I keep reading about giclée prints.

I understand that there are different qualities of inkjet printers and prints, using dyes or pigments of varying colour and archival properties, but what exactly is a giclée print? Is just a print made on a "very good" printer with "very good" inks and "very good" software? Does my Canon Pixma Pro with its 8 dye-based inks qualify as a giclée printer (I think not ... but why)?

Or is it just name given by labs to justify charging a bit more for a good quality "archival" print?

I'd welcome clarification of this! Just to be clear, the context is mainly printing scanned photographic negatives, as well as digitally acquired files.

AERO · Mar 28, 2025

Or is it just name given by labs to justify charging a bit more for a good quality "archival" print?

or used by the pretentious

Don_ih · Mar 28, 2025

To quote a website called The Stackhouse:

"In the early 1990s, Nash Editions began promoting digital inkjet printing for fine art. To distinguish fine art inkjet prints, Jack Duganne, a Nash Edition employee, coined the term ‘Giclee.’ Based on the French word ‘gicler,’ this term quickly came to signify fine art digital prints, though its use has declined over the years."

which correlates with what I read long ago.

So, yes - high quality inkjet print.

koraks · Mar 28, 2025

AERO said:
or used by the pretentious

I'd have to side with this. It's just a pretentious name for an inkjet print with the only apparent reason to avoid the connotations of inkjet. These connotations probably all boil down to dimensions of compromised quality.

ChrisGalway said:
Does my Canon Pixma Pro with its 8 dye-based inks qualify as a giclée printer (I think not ... but why)?

This is in fact already more relevant information than the whole fancy-schmancy 'giclée' moniker. Knowing which types of inks were used is relevant for archival and image quality purposes. The same is true for the paper used. I've seen paper brand being mentioned for exhibition prints (but never the specific type; so it's generally just "Hahnemühle" or at best something like "Hahnemühle rag"). Interestingly, the more relevant information of ink type/set is usually left unmentioned, although sometimes a print is at least labeled as a 'pigment' print, which already says something.

It's a case of the woods and the trees, with some people having decided it's a good idea to put some plastic Christmas trees among the real firs to spice things up a little.

loccdor · Mar 28, 2025

From Hollywood and with a French name. Now it all makes sense.

Ballinderry-Michael · Mar 28, 2025

I don't possess a high-grade inkjet printer. Until a local lab (in Lurgan. Co. Armagh) closed, I'd take colour work to them in the form of digital files to be printed on photographic paper. They were nice to me, an amateur among their mainly professional clientèle. I understand lab prints on photographic paper to be in general archivally superior to inkjet prints. Am I broadly correct?

I have lately been doing more monochrome infrared photography on digital rather than on film. It has been a pleasant surprise to find that Harman Photo produce lab prints on their own paper. The quality appears to me to be splendid. A

I know that this isn't central to this thread's question; but it seems to me relevant and worth saying.

koraks · Mar 28, 2025

Ballinderry-Michael said:
I understand lab prints on photographic paper to be in general archivally superior to inkjet prints. Am I broadly correct?

That's a very big and very messy can of worms, really. Let's say "it depends on how you look at it, and who you asked." They both have their pros & cons. The future is inkjet - that's for sure.

Ian Grant · Mar 28, 2025

The term first became bandied about when Graham Nash (the musician) set up two labs "Tapestry", one in LA the other in London and introduced high-end digital inkjet printing. This was the early 1990s and the first consumer inkjet printers were still relatively low resolution and very expensive.

Ian

AERO · Mar 28, 2025

koraks said:
That's a very big and very messy can of worms, really. Let's say "it depends on how you look at it, and who you asked." They both have their pros & cons. The future is inkjet - that's for sure.

.............at the price of inks these days.....and people moan abut the price of film!!

funny old world eh?

koraks · Mar 28, 2025

Ian Grant said:
This was the early 1990s and the first consumer inkjet printers were still relatively low resolution and very expensive.

I remember the first popular color inkjet printers we sold; these were HP DeskJet printers, probably the 870cxi (if memory serves). This must have been around 1996 or thereabouts, so the technology had been around for a few years already, but consumers were just starting to wake up to it. These were simple CMYK printers with dye inks. It was absolute magic seeing a color image materialize onto paper with any fidelity at all. That the prints striped horribly, no decent paper was available, individual dots could be counted with the naked eye and the prints faded badly when exposed to daylight - hey, we didn't mind. We had prints, in color, and they were somewhat affordable! Around the same time, we also had an inkjet-printed poster printed on transparency material using a graphic arts printer. Print quality was atrocious by today's standards, but back in the 1990s, a 2x3' backlit poster with decent resolution and color gamut printed with a digital machine was as close to magic as it could get. It's easy to see why people waxed lyrical and started making up fancy names.

AERO said:
.............at the price of inks these days.....and people moan abut the price of film!!

The world of inkjet is a whole lot bigger than consumer level desktop printers. People seem to forget. Prints on paper (and paper-like bases) are currently still around 90% produced with offset, and that market share is presently eroding quickly, giving way to digital print (=inkjet). That's where the hectoliters of ink are going. Fine arts and home printers is peanuts. For photo applications, the economics are RA4 silver-based with its chemistry vs. an inkjet-based workflow. In the end, the latter is going to win that game. RA4 market share is eroding just like offset. The competition isn't taking place on your desktop where you fudge with 100ml cartridges. It's not even being decided in the fine arts print shops. It's decided in industrial printing shops where machines the size of your living room churn out thousands of prints per hour. That's the trenches of this war, and the expected winner is taking the battlefield by storm. It's nothing short of a blitzkrieg.

Don_ih · Mar 28, 2025

A bit overly dramatic.

One is a rising technology, continuously being researched and developed. The others are, by comparison, outmoded.

I doubt you're going to be getting cans of soup with inkjet printed labels any time soon, though.

runswithsizzers · Mar 28, 2025

I can remember a period of several years when inkjet printers were advertised as having "near photographic quality." I suppose, at some point, they got good enough to drop the "near"?

The last inkjet printer I owned was a cheap Canon i860 which I bought in 2004. For small snapshot photos, I thought the photo quality was not bad, considering it used only five inks, but OMG the maintenance! Ten years later, I got tired of the damn things constant thirst for ink cartridges, not to mention clogged jets, banding, and smearing.

For what few color prints I wanted, I decided it was better for me to just pay a lab. I replaced the inkjet with a monochrome laser printer for documents, and immediately noticed a significant improvement in the quality of my life, and also in the quality of my text documents. ;-)

mtnbkr · Mar 28, 2025

runswithsizzers said:
For what few color prints I wanted, I decided it was better for me to just pay a lab. I replaced the inkjet with a monochrome laser printer for documents, and immediately noticed a significant improvement in the quality of my life, and also in the quality of my text documents. ;-)

I've gone the same route. I so seldom need color in my day-to-day printing, it's just not worth bothering with an inkjet printer. I bought a small laser printer and haven't looked back. For my limited color photographic prints, I just send them out. The cost of doing that is far below the cost of owning and maintaining an inkjet printer. I suppose that suggests I should print more photos.

Chris

AERO · Mar 28, 2025

runswithsizzers said:
I can remember a period of several years when inkjet printers were advertised as having "near photographic quality." I suppose, at some point, they got good enough to drop the "near"?

The last inkjet printer I owned was a cheap Canon i860 which I bought in 2004. For small snapshot photos, I thought the photo quality was not bad, considering it used only five inks, but OMG the maintenance! Ten years later, I got tired of the damn things constant thirst for ink cartridges, not to mention clogged jets, banding, and smearing.

For what few color prints I wanted, I decided it was better for me to just pay a lab. I replaced the inkjet with a monochrome laser printer for documents, and immediately noticed a significant improvement in the quality of my life, and also in the quality of my text documents. ;-)

I have just done the same ...Ditched the big Brother Laser and the Brother inkjejet....bought an all black.....

retina_restoration · Mar 28, 2025

AERO said:
Or is it just name given by labs to justify charging a bit more for a good quality "archival" print?

or used by the pretentious

This is closest to the truth. My impression is that “giclée” was a manufactured term intended to convey to the public that these were superior prints, rather than merely some consumer-grade inkjet throwaway snaps. However, it was a nonsensical word, employed to promote the product and coerce the buyer into believing they were acquiring something significantly superior to what they could produce at home.

In other words, just pretentious advertising speak. It's French for "squirt", or ejaculate, which comes closest to revealing just how contrived the marketing really was.

koraks · Mar 28, 2025

Don_ih said:
A bit overly dramatic.

You ain't seen nothing yet - literally.

Don_ih said:
I doubt you're going to be getting cans of soup with inkjet printed labels any time soon, though.

Packaging is indeed one of the growth segments. Soup - maybe not tomorrow.
A few years ago, I bought Sandy King et al's carbon transfer book. Those who bought it in the US got an offset printed copy. Mine was inkjet printed. No stock of this title was apparently held in Europe - any orders were simply fulfilled by printing a copy on demand.

AERO · Mar 28, 2025

retina_restoration said:
It's French for "squirt", or ejaculate, which comes closest to revealing just how contrived the marketing really was.

Imagine it on a date... "did you just giclee my dear....."

Chan Tran · Mar 28, 2025

They invented the term to differentiate from the early 90's desktop paint jet printers to the drum mounted Iris printer. Back then the difference between the 2 were very significant.

Sirius Glass · Mar 28, 2025

ChrisGalway said:
I keep reading about giclée prints.

I understand that there are different qualities of inkjet printers and prints, using dyes or pigments of varying colour and archival properties, but what exactly is a giclée print? Is just a print made on a "very good" printer with "very good" inks and "very good" software? Does my Canon Pixma Pro with its 8 dye-based inks qualify as a giclée printer (I think not ... but why)?

Or is it just name given by labs to justify charging a bit more for a good quality "archival" print?

I'd welcome clarification of this! Just to be clear, the context is mainly printing scanned photographic negatives, as well as digitally acquired files.

Just a fancy word for an Inkjet print.

ChrisGalway · Mar 28, 2025

Thanks all, it seems comment #19 sums it up.

Given I bought the Canon Pixma Pro 200, I'm making my own prints rather than send them to a lab. I'm very pleased with the results. The only problem is that the printer drinks ink, so an A3+ print on Ilford Galerie paper costs around $3 for the paper and $4-$5 for the ink. I use the printer every 1-2 months and have had no problems with blockages (over 3 years now).

Taylor Nankervis · Mar 28, 2025

With the progressive dying out of machine-based RA-4 printing, giclée prints are what we are pretty much stuck with in the post-Ilfochrome Classic era. Casting a critical eye, I regard the printing (despite the wider gamut availability) as inferior to both Ilfochrome Classic (in a very big way!) and inferior again to RA-4. The only 'advantage' to giclée is easy and fast profiling variability and especially, repeatability of a set objective, on not just one but myriad different media finishes. Archival stability is not as good as Ilfochrome Classic, but likely on par with the best RA-4 prints (60-80 years). It is curious that the cost of giclée is now rising, as too, the media specifically designed for it.

ChrisGalway said:
Does my Canon Pixma Pro with its 8 dye-based inks qualify as a giclée printer (I think not ... but why)?

The pro-level lab Canon — not a Pixma — I have my printing made on has 24 inks and able to run off 3 print jobs simultaneously. Their two RA-4 machines went to the tip in late 2022 when repair/reconditioning proved uneconomical/unviable with no spares available.
But yes, your Pixma can be described as giclée; being a French word it is not in wide English use outside knowledgeable circles; that is, not particularly in a supermarket that sells pillows, mince meat and batteries. Mention giclée in an office supplier for example, and you'll likely get a stunned mullet expression. People — mums, dads and kids, say what first comes to mind — "have you got any good inkjet printers I can look at?".

wiltw · Mar 28, 2025

I used to deliberately choose to send my digital files out to a commercial printer with the process of digitally-controlled optically-exposed conventional photographic chemically-processed paper, and not employ inkjet technology (giclée or sprayed). It was called digitally exposed C-prints. Specifically, I wanted prints on Fuji Crystal paper.
Anyone out there aware of the usage of the digitally exposed C-print today, is it less of the market now?

Taylor Nankervis · Mar 28, 2025

wiltw said:
Anyone out there aware of the usage of the digitally exposed C-print today, is it less of the market now?

Yes. The market is vanishingly small and diminishing.

What you described is just the fancy term for digitally-produced RA-4 prints. Similar to the hoi-poloi calling a B&W print a 'bespoke silver gelatin print'. Then there's me. I call a spade a spade.

Of digitally produced RA-4s, the photograph is scanned (mostly drum scanning now). Sized and profiled, proofed and viewed, profiled then to printer. Then saved as a tif (150dpi), send to the chemically-dunked RA-4 printer and printed on (what was predominantly used as a rav-fav) to Kodak Endura Professional metallic, lustre, pearl or matte media (Fuji CA was sometimes requested, though I didn't fancy it).

Giclée will be the only option available for commercial printing when the last of the RA-4 machines are carted off for scrap. The end of Kodak's Endura Professional media was a heads-up of trouble ahead.

MattKing · Mar 28, 2025

My understanding is that there is more high volume use of RA4 in the volume printers in the EU.
When the scale is like that, RA4 is very economical. That is the biggest reason it is still around.

Don_ih · Mar 28, 2025

koraks said:
printing a copy on demand.

Print on demand is likely the very near future for many books. It's the most reasonable option for books almost no one wants to buy, like the one you mentioned.

You and I, however, will be long dead before you find things like cereal boxes printed using inkjet. That would simply be plainly stupid to do. You cannot compare the throughput of offset printing - which is light speed - to inkjet - which is closer to donkey speed.

What is a "giclée" print ... really?

ChrisGalway

AERO

Don_ih

koraks

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loccdor

Ballinderry-Michael

koraks

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Ian Grant

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runswithsizzers

mtnbkr

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Chan Tran

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ChrisGalway

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wiltw

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What is a "giclée" print ... really?

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