Museum Quality Giclées

When I moved to Essex, CT a couple of years ago, a friend recommended I introduce myself to Jerry Reed. Jerry owns a company called New Light Images also based in Essex, and he is a master printer.

I met Jerry by accident at my store and we realized we were both gear-heads and shared many common interests. He showed me his Giclée work and I was literally blown away. Jerry works with many fine artists for whom he reproduces their work. I asked Jerry to share some of his printing knowledge with me and here are the results.




What is a giclée?
A giclée (pronounced zhee-CLAY) is a fine art reproduction of an original painting.
Giclées are customarily reproduced on the same surface as the original painting. For example, oil paintings are reproduced on artist’s canvas. Giclées are superior to traditional lithography in the follow measures:
• Wider color gamut
• Finer detail
• Less expensive
• Archival quality - 100 years without color change
Wider color gamut - Giclées utilize technologically advanced inkjet technology, far more sophisticated than desktop printers. The process employs eight colors--cyan and light cyan, magenta and light magenta, yellow and three shades of black of light-fast pigmented inks.
Finer detail - More numerous, replaceable print heads create a wider color gamut than has ever been achievable previously. Exception paper and canvas media from Germany, England and the United States, complete the improvements that provide for unexcelled reproduction today.

Less expensive - Giclées provide superior image quality at lower expense and may be produced in small numbers, even one at a time.
Giclées are priced less expensively than limited edition lithographs. Limited edition lithographic prints are usually produced all at once in editions of 500-1000. Giclées are coveted by collectors for their fidelity and quality, and desired by galleries and artists alike, because they may be produced one at a time without the large outlay of capital and storage that lithographs previously required.
Archival quality - Giclées were originally developed as a proofing system for traditional lithographic printing presses, but it soon became apparent that the 4-color presses were having a hard time delivering the quality and brilliant color of 8-color giclée proofs. Giclées evolved into the new darlings of the art world.

What do you mean by Museum Quality?
In a nutshell, museum quality means quality equal to that produced and sold by museums, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. There is no finer quality. At recent event, the MFA, Boston sold $1.2 million in giclée reproductions of Monet’s paintings.
There are subtle, but significant differences between average giclées and those made by museums, and good reason for the differences. Buyers of museum giclées have the original masterwork for direct comparison at the time of purchase, just the way that artists do when make giclées for gallery placement and sale.
A primary reason for the improvements in image quality, seen in museum quality giclées is the spectacular precision of the specialist photographers who work at museums, and the world class equipment that museums employ in reproduction work. The next sections detail what the differences are in the digital capture, lighting and printing equipment utilized by museums and equipment generally used by giclée print makers outside of museums.
The significant point is, if giclée print makers use lesser quality equipment than museums, then they cannot produce museum quality.

How does Lighting affect the reproduction process?
Major museums studied how best to light art in the museum’s collection. The primary concern was accuracy of color from shot to shot. The goal is to render exactly the same color as measured by evaluating light reflected from a known standard, the GreTag MacBeth Color Checker. A perfect white must contain equal values in each of the three colors captured in the light reflected from the known color source. The highlights that are to be white with detail must each read 230 in the RED, GREEN and BLUE channels when evaluated in Photoshop. Small differences lead to undesirable color shifts. Lights that produce enough light to photograph paintings are available for $500. An original piece of art can be lit with two such lights at a cost of $1,000. Museums do not employ lights of this quality for one reason, such lights produce inconsistent color temperatures and produce inconsistent color.

Camera and Digital Capture
Over time, as improvements in technology have been made, museums evaluate new equipment against the proven standard of the day.
When the new is better than the older, they abandon the old and incorporate the new.
This pattern has led to the abandonment of:
1980s -4 by 5 inch scanned transparencies
1990s - Scanning backs & 4 by 5 inch cameras
2000 – 645 Single shot digital backs
Today - 645 Multi-shot digital backs.
Digital files can be created with a Canon Digital Rebel camera that costs less than $1,000. If that is true, why spend more than $60,000?

Why do major museums use expensive multi-shot digital backs and willingly pay still more for precision lighting equipment?

For the same reason that I do, to get the very best quality, Museum Quality.

Thanks Jerry for sharing this information with me. For more info and to contact Jerry directly visit New Light Images.