Why Should You Choose Giclee Over Digital Prints?

If you’ve been looking for online home prints for a while, then no doubt you’ve seen words like giclee prints and digital prints. For most people, these terms are rather incomprehensible and even annoying.

Giclee print is a high-quality digital print artwork, made on an inkjet printer. But not every digital print can be called giclee. Currently, you can find different definitions of giclee prints. In this post, I will discuss the 3 main the differences between giclee prints and other digital prints. So, let’s begin.

Giclee is printed with high-quality ink jet printer (not laser) having 8 or more colors, and reproducing a wide spectrum and color depth than conventional printers. Images have all the tones and shades of the original work. No visible points. Digital prints created using cheaper inkjet printers with 4-6 colors or laser printers.

They use a special light-fast pigmented inks (not water soluble), which retain the brightness during 75-100 years, depending on manufacturer application. For example, Epson claim that their archival inks K3 retain the brightness for 100 years for color images and 200 years for black and white. Digital prints are usually created using water-soluble ink, which is much cheaper and quickly turns pale with time.

In addition, the quality of the paper or canvas is of great importance for long-lasting prints. Giclee is printed on high-quality paper, such as archival or art paper. Archival paper with archival ink allows you to save the brightness print for many years. Art paper with different textures, adds depth a print, making it more visually appealing. For digital prints used cheaper paper.

If you know these 3 main differences giclee prints and digital prints, you can feel more confident when choosing art for your home and ask the right questions to the artist, if you have doubts.

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At photo: Alvar Aalto vases giclee print