Fine Art Printing

What is fine art printing? There are various organisations who offer definitions and marketing terms such as giclée (meaning spray) which comes from the type of inkjet printing that can produce fine art prints. In general, the purpose of fine art printing is to produce prints from digital images, that are durable, colour-fast, and will look like new for a long time – decades.

Digital images are produced, typically, by digital cameras or scanners either by photographers or specialists copying original artworks for the purpose of producing fine-art prints. In the latter case a “colour-managed” process is needed to reproduce colours as accurately as possible, within the limits of the camera and printer technology. We use Canon Pro printers that use 12 ink cartridges to produce a very wide colour gamut printing up to 2,400 DPI (dots per inch).

Durability and colour fastness of prints are affected by two things: the quality of the medium and the inks used.

There are several attributes often provided for media but, in general, being acid free, OBA (Optical Brightening Agents) free and the base material (eg cotton) will all provide resistance to yellowing and other aging effects. It’s also generally accepted that 250gsm weight is a target minimum for giclée printing. There are other options such as canvas or canvas-like materials that produce fine results too.

Generally printers use either dye-based or pigment-based inks. The latter is required for fine-art printing, today, as they provide very long life. For example, we use Canon high scratch resistant Lucia Pro II inks. Canon states these products “that preserve your work with improved light fastness using high light resistance pigment ink for up to 200 years”!

The bottom line is that a high quality digital image, printed using good quality media and these inks will produce impressive prints that will last a lifetime.