Giclée vs Fine Art Print: What Is the Difference?

These two terms get used as though one is the premium version of the other. They are not comparable in that way at all. Giclée describes how a print was made. Fine art print describes what it is being sold as. One is a method and the other is a category, and a single print is usually both at once.

Neither term is protected, certified or defined by any standards body. Anyone can print an image on an inkjet printer and call the result a giclée fine art print, and nothing in law or trade practice stops them. That is worth knowing before you pay a premium for either word.

The short answer

A giclée is a pigment inkjet print, normally on acid-free fine art paper or canvas, colour managed for the specific paper it is printed on. A fine art print is any print sold as art, which includes giclées, screenprints, etchings, lithographs and a great deal else. Most giclées are sold as fine art prints. Not every fine art print is a giclée.

So the useful question is not which term is better. It is what sits behind whichever term you have been given: pigment or dye ink, what the paper is made of, and whether the printer built a profile for that paper before running the job.

What giclée means

Giclée is French for "to spray", and it describes the mechanism: microscopic droplets of ink sprayed onto the substrate by an inkjet head. The word was adopted in the early 1990s for fine art inkjet reproduction, largely because "inkjet print" sounded like something that came out of an office printer and made the work harder to sell.

Over time the term has come to carry a set of expectations, even though none of them are guaranteed by the word itself. In normal trade use a giclée implies pigment inks rather than dye, a substrate that is acid-free and lignin-free, and a colour-managed workflow. A print described as a giclée that uses dye inks on a coated poster stock is still, strictly, a giclée. It is just not what anyone means by the word.

What fine art print means

Fine art print is a category rather than a process. It covers every printed thing sold as art, from a hand-pulled etching to a signed digital reproduction. The term tells you the intent behind the object and nothing at all about how it was made.

That breadth is why the two words do not oppose each other cleanly. An original etching is a fine art print and is definitely not a giclée. A giclée reproduction of an oil painting is a fine art print and is definitely not an etching. Both descriptions are accurate; neither is a quality claim.

The terms side by side

Original prints and reproductions are not the same thing

This is the distinction that matters far more than giclée against fine art print, and it is the one most often blurred.

In an original print, the printing matrix is the artwork. An etching plate, a screen, a lithographic stone or a woodblock is made by the artist, and each impression pulled from it is an original work in an edition. Nothing was copied. The print is the thing itself.

In a reproduction, something else is the artwork. A giclée of an oil painting is a photograph of that painting, printed. The painting hangs somewhere; the print is a record of it. Both are entirely legitimate objects to buy and sell, and a well made reproduction edition is a normal part of an artist's income. The problem only arises when the two are described in the same language and a buyer assumes they are getting the first.

A properly catalogued edition says which it is. If a listing says "limited edition print" and will not say whether the matrix or the painting is the artwork, that is the question to press.

What to ask before you commit

Whether you are commissioning a print run of your own work or buying one, the same short list separates a considered print from an expensive inkjet.

• Pigment or dye ink? Pigment holds its colour far longer. If the answer is vague, assume dye.

• Which paper, by name and weight? "Fine art paper" is not an answer. Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White 310gsm is an answer.

• Is the substrate acid-free and lignin-free? This is what stops the paper yellowing and going brittle from the inside.

• Is there an ICC profile for that specific paper? Every paper takes ink differently. A generic profile is where most colour disappointment comes from.

• Will you see a proof or test strip before the full run? On an edition this is not a luxury.

• Is it a reproduction or an original print, and what is the edition size? Both should be stated in writing.

Does the difference change what a print is worth?

For resale value, the terms themselves do very little work. What moves the price of a print at auction or through a gallery is the artist, whether the edition is closed, how many were made, and the condition of the sheet. A giclée by a sought-after artist in a numbered edition of thirty will hold value that a screenprint by nobody in particular will not.

For longevity, the specification does all of the work. A pigment print on cotton rag behind UV filtering glass will outlast a dye print on coated stock by a wide margin, and that gap widens with every year the piece spends on a wall. Our guide to UV protection in picture framing covers the glazing side of that, which matters more than most buyers expect.

The one place the distinction is genuinely worth money is disclosure. A reproduction sold as an original print is a different object at a different price, and that is the misdescription to watch for rather than a debate about which noun to use.

Where the words came from, and why they stuck

Both terms exist for commercial reasons rather than technical ones. Giclée was adopted because early fine art inkjet output needed a name that did not sound like office equipment. Fine art print exists because galleries needed a heading that could sit above a wide range of processes without committing to any of them.

That history explains why neither word carries a specification. They were never meant to. Treating them as grades is a misreading, and it is the reason two prints described identically can be twenty years apart in how long they last.

How we print at the workshop

Our house fine art stock is Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White 310gsm, a 100% cotton smooth matt paper, and we order in anything else a client specifies. Printing runs on an HP Designjet Z6200, 62 inches wide, with a ten cartridge pigment ink set, and every paper has its own ICC profile built in house and soft proofed against a calibrated monitor before anything reaches the roll. Our giclée printing service sets out the papers, sizes and prices, and the wider fine art printing page covers canvas, photographic and display substrates.

Most of the work is reproduction for artists turning paintings into editions and for galleries running numbered runs with certification. Because we have been framing since 1974 the print does not leave the building between being printed and being framed, which removes a handling stage that damages more prints than most people realise.

If you have an original you want reproduced, send us a photograph of it and tell us the size you have in mind, and we will tell you which papers are worth proofing and what the run would cost.