Giclée Prints

Giclée prints are very high quality and very high resolution reproductions made on the latest generation of inkjet printers. They are made from a digital file (ie a scan from an artwork or photograph, or a digital camera file) using special long life inks and top quality art papers.

 The benefits of giclée printing include:

• Superb image quality

• Greatly reduced initial costs compared to conventional (lithographic) printing.

• Print an edition as you receive orders, helps your cash flow and eliminates storage problems.

• No need to complete an edition, eliminating unsold wasted prints.

• Limited edition prints on really good paper gives a high value to the print, therefore more income.

• Lightfast inksets give long life to the print, much longer than conventional printing.

• Much higher quality reproduction than conventional printing .

 

Ink and Paper

Chromatech prints onto sheet and roll paper up to 24" wide, giving the opportunity to print up to A1 size (23x33", 610x840mm).  Brian's favourite paper is Hahnemühle German Etching 310 gsm paper.  It is a beautiful art paper, white but not overly bright and it looks really good. It's an acid free archival 100% α-cellulose paper that gives excellent long life prints.  The canvas is white Artist Canvas, 100% pure cotton.  In addition he also uses  Hahnemühle Photo Rag 310gsm paper for a smoother matte finish, and Permajet Alpha Natural Rag 310 for botanical art. For photographers, Hahnemühle Baryta paper is also in stock. New this year are a couple of new papers: Fotospeeds Cotton Etching 305 and Platinum Cotton 285. For more information on paper, please follow this link.

As mentioned on the Home page, there are now two price lists for prints: Price List 'A' is for the papers mentioned above and includes the recent price increases; Price List 'B' is for  two new papers that are less expensive to by in, but still work extremely well. They are a little lighter in weight and less textured, apart from that they are excellent papers.

Brian uses the latest generation of original Epson UltraChrome HDR inks, giving an extremely wide colour range. The inks give very smooth tonal variations in both colour and B/W prints, and Epson boast a light fastness in excess of 60 years indoor display life (published test conditions available here).

 

The Costs

The costs come in two parts:  the first is the previously discussed Copy/Setup/Proof price of the original (see here) and the second is for making the prints. Chromatech does not charge VAT so there are no extra costs to add in.

A3+ size is oversize A3 sheets (329x483mm, 14 x 19in) to give an extra border around an A3 print.  Don’t forget that eight A4s fit onto one A1, four onto an A2 etc, so multiple copies can work out quite economically if the images will plan up onto a larger sheet. A2+ (A2 Square) size is 610x610mm, 24x24in.

 

Hopefully you will sell your giclée prints and will need more. Since the images are archived on the server that's easy - just email and ask for more prints. Reprints will be exactly the same as the first prints made, because they are printed from exactly the same file. Reprints from files that are set up do not incur a further setup fee. Therefore the costs are only for the prints you re-order.

 

Chromatech can also print directly from your digital files, in which case the setup fee reduces to £10.00. This would include work scanned by other sources and from digital camera files. Send your files via WeTransfer.com, saved as TIF, JPG or RAW files and in the Adobe RGB (1998) colour space. Big files are a must - the bigger, the better. Contact us to discuss further.

 

N.B. If you supply a digital file Chromatech cannot guarantee the accuracy of the colour reproduction. This is because whilst our system is colour managed, the system that made your file may not be. Therefore if Brian hasn't seen the original, he will have no idea what the correct colour should be, and can therefore only make a straight print from your file, which may or may not match the colour of the original scene. However this should be apparent in the proof. If he makes full size prints from your files and then you don't like the colours, he will redo them for you. However, Brian reserves the right to charge a minimum of 50% of the list price to cover time and materials etc.