The word "giclée" (pronounced zhee-KLAY) comes from the French verb gicler, meaning "to spray." It refers to a fine art printing process that uses high-resolution inkjet technology with archival pigment inks to produce prints of extraordinary colour depth and longevity.
Giclée printing was developed in the late 1980s as a way to reproduce fine art with a fidelity that offset lithography could not achieve. The process uses inkjet printers with many ink channels — Epson's professional printers, which we use at Axis Prints, use 10 separate pigment ink channels — to lay down microscopic ink droplets with extreme precision.
The key difference between giclée and standard photo printing is the inks. Standard consumer inkjet printers use dye-based inks, which are vivid but fade relatively quickly. Giclée printing uses pigment-based inks — specifically, Ultrachrome HDX inks in our case — which are fade-resistant and rated for 100+ years on archival substrates.
The substrates used in giclée printing are also critical. Standard photo paper won't produce a true giclée print. Archival substrates — cotton rag papers, baryta, and artist canvas — are acid-free, lignin-free, and designed to last centuries without yellowing or degrading.
Giclée prints are now the standard for limited edition fine art prints sold in galleries. Collectors and institutions recognise the term as a quality marker, and prints labelled as giclée command significantly higher prices than standard photographic prints.
At Axis Prints, every print we make is produced using the giclée process — we don't offer anything less. This means you can be confident that every print you receive from us will maintain its quality for generations.