Giclée Printing Fine Art Reproduction

A giclée is a pigment inkjet print made on archival fine art paper or canvas and colour managed to match the original. The word is French for "to spray" and describes how the ink is applied. It is a method, not a quality standard, so what makes one worth commissioning is the specification behind it: pigment rather than dye inks, an acid-free and lignin-free substrate, and a colour-managed workflow with a paper-specific ICC profile.

Printed as part of a framing order, an A3 or A2 giclée print is around £50 including VAT. Above A2 we price by area and by paper, because heavier cotton rag costs more per square metre than matt stock. Trade, gallery and edition work is quoted per run. For individuals commissioning a one-off, our minimum order value is £300, so a print is normally commissioned alongside its framing rather than on its own.

Our house stock is Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White 310gsm, a 100% cotton smooth matt paper. We also print on Photo Rag 308gsm, German Etching 310gsm, William Turner 310gsm, Museum Etching 350gsm and Photo Rag Baryta 315gsm, and we will order in any paper a client specifies. All of them are acid-free and lignin-free. We also print on fine art canvas, which we varnish and stretch in house.

HP rate the pigment ink set we use at over 100 years of display permanence in indoor light, and over 200 years away from direct sunlight, based on testing by the HP Image Permanence Lab and Wilhelm Imaging Research. That is a manufacturer rating for an ink and paper combination under test conditions rather than a guarantee we issue. What determines the life of a print in a real room is where it hangs and what glazing is in front of it. UV filtering glass does more than any paper upgrade.

As a working rule we want around 300 dpi at the final print size. A 1 metre wide print therefore wants roughly 12,000 pixels across, which is more than most phone cameras produce. Send us the file before you settle on a size and we will tell you what it will hold. We can improve a marginal file if it is the only copy in existence, but there is a limit to what recovery achieves, and a proper flat copy shot of an original will always beat it.

Our HP Designjet Z6200 is 62 inches wide and takes roll media, so a single print can be up to 1.5 metres wide by the length of the roll. Larger images are printed in sections and bonded to panel, which is the standard approach for wall-sized commercial artwork. Joins become insignificant at normal viewing distance for a piece that size.

Yes, and it is the main reason clients use us rather than a print bureau. The print goes straight from the roll into the framing workshop without being packed, posted and handled again. It also means the mount, glazing and frame are specified with the print in front of us rather than to a set of measurements. We have been framing since 1974 and are members of the Fine Art Trade Guild and the Museums Association.

Yes. For limited edition runs we can supply ArtSure edition authentication and a signed certificate of authenticity with each print. Editions are printed as a batch against a single approved proof rather than reprinted piecemeal over time, which is what keeps the last print in an edition matching the first.