What is a giclee?

Giclée, commonly pronounced "zhee-clay," deriving from the French word gicleur, meaning "nozzle", is a printmaking method using an ink-jet printer to produce high-quality reproductions of original paintings. In giclee, the ink is sprayed on to your choice of media in millions of colors utilizing continuous tone technology, retaining all the fine detail of the original. It was created by a printmaker, Jack Duganne, and originally referred to fine art prints created on Iris printers in the early 1990s but is now defined as any high-quality ink-jet print.

Currently, giclées are associated with prints using fade-resistant archival ink. The printers use the CMYK color process and may have multiple cartridges for variations of each color that increase the apparent resolution and color gamut, allowing smoother gradient transitions.

The giclée is the new standard in the art industry and is widely embraced for its astonishing quality by major museums, galleries, publishers and artists. A giclée reproduction is the closest replication of original artwork.