Gicleé Prints

What is a giclee? A one of a kind archival museum quality print!

Giclee (zheeclay) is a French term meaning "spray of ink". An archival ink jet print on paper or canvas is known as a giclee.

Each giclee print is “one of a kind”. Today’s giclee printing process provides superior color accuracy and archivability. The quality rivals and exceeds traditional silver-halide and gelatin photographic printing processes. Giclee prints are commonly found in art museums and photographic galleries such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Chelsea Galleries.

Tom Gamache’s original photographic giclee prints are created beginning with large and medium format conventional film masters. Custom chemical development is used to maximize the color, saturation and contrast of the original transparencies.

Large (800gb to more than 1.5 tb) individual digital files are created from the film originals using a highly specialized 8000 dpi laser drum scanner. The files are so large that film grain virtually disappears, creating an entirely new, smoother, more natural and realistic surface texture.

Once digitized, the files are maximized in a sophisticated image-processing application. The image is returned to its original, natural appearance in hue, tone, brilliance, contrast and other original properties as it appeared before being captured on film and altered by the scanning processes. A state-of-the-art calibrated monitor creates an exacting electronic representation of the image.

A state-of- the-art, large format archival ink jet printer, using continuous tone technology in which infinitely small pigmented color ink droplets are sprayed onto the printing surface is then used to produce a long lasting archival print. Once completed, each image can be comprised of 20 billion or more droplets of ink, each one measuring no more than a few microns in diameter. The file and test print are then optimized and test printed again and again. Once approved by the artist, a final print is made. All prints are completed by the application of a UV light retardant coating. The result is a one of kind museum quality, exhibition photographic print.

-top-