Giclee printing... Where to begin

[ProWraps]

if one was to start printing in the Giclee world, where would one begin as far as printer wise?

will a solvent mutoh do it? or is there dedicated printers to do so. Yes I have searched both this site and google.

I guess im just wondering if our 1304's would qualify and if not, what printer do we need to buy.

TIA.
-Chris

ps, fred. a dedicated Giclee board would be sweet as I see it as becoming an emerging market.

 

[artbot]

doing the same thing right now. after several hours of searching (and i have done giclees int the past). the HP Z3100 44" looks like a category killer. you can pick a used one up for about $3k. a whole set up paper, ink, pc etc won't run more than $5k. pretty cheap to extend you net.

as for giclee customers, be prepared for excruciating color discussion. each and ever brush stroke in a painting is under discussion... is that gray brown too slightly neutral. i think that one green looks a tiny bit too ...green? and then there's the photography. if printing smaller images (22x30) original artwork. my favorite way was to get a really nice 11x17 scanner. scan each corner of the piece and assemble in photoshop. only takes about 20 minutes and you get insane, INSANE! quality. a level that just can be photographed ever.

 

[ProWraps]

thanks for the advice.

anyone got any more?

 

[Bly]

I used to do a lot of this kind of work.
I don't know what the market is in your neck of the woods but now here every second framing shop and half the big electronics stores offer canvas prints at 3/4 of the price I would think about charging.
Sure it can be profitable but research what you can charge before investing too much. The media is expensive. Artists can be overly critical PIA's who want to talk more than spend. Your colour management better be spot on. Black and white prints will be the bane of your existence otherwise. You'll need to be able to scan or photograph large pieces of art accurately.
I used an HP5500 for all my prints. The quality was easily good enough especially on the textured canvases and watercolour papers.
I know there are some nice solvent canvases available but you'll need to be able to offer a couple of arty papers. Hahnemulle make some nice watercolours.
You may be better off with an aqueous ink printer for this type of work.
Artists and photographers LOVE the Epson brand.
Good luck.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

What Artbot said is pretty much right on, they're extremely picky for the most part. It's also hard to be in that business without the input capability, either large format scanning, drum scanning or photography. An in-depth understanding of color management and color correction (far far beyond what is needed for everyday sign and wrap work) is critical.

That said, we've been doing a fair amount of photographic and fine-art work with our GS6000 for a few customers (admittedly not excessively picky customers or high-end gallery work) and so far so good, this printer really impresses me in this market, print quality and color gamut are ridiculous for a solvent printer.

So if you want to stick with a solvent machine, look into the GS6000, you'll be able to run your wraps on it too so it's versatility for a business like yours (or mine) is a huge plus, and since you already have Mutohs this won't be too much of a change for you (since it's built by them). If you want a real giclee printer though, get an aqueous Epson, Canon or HP.

Unfortunately, no, your 4-color Mutoh is not up to the task, sorry to disappoint... You need a printer with a color gamut beyond 4-color solvent.

 

[Bill Modzel]

The HP 3100/3200, the Canon iPF8300 both have an extra matt black and are 12 color machines withe the red, green, blue and gray inks.
I used to run an HP5000 also and getting a dead black on watercolor paper was impossible. These babies have a 20% larger color gamut than the cmyk units.

The Epson's have always been popular also but they used to wast a lot if ink keeping the print heads clean. I'm not sure about the newest models.

 

[MachServTech]

Epson and aqueous technology is the gold standard of Giclee. Some of it is hype, but there are good reasons too. First the dot placement on Epson printers is very accurate with consistent dot formation by fixed piezo print heads. (HP printheads are replaceable but use thermal drop ejection causing some drop inaccuracy especially on the beginning and end of a pass. (these are almost microscopic differences) Also, Epson inks have had a consistently larger color gamut until recently. (Canon and HP have surpassed in some cases).

I think for the money Canon has the best giclee printers in the world right now because of the extremely large color gamut. (if you can control it)

HP has a easy to use factor and has built in spectrophotometers for easy recalibration and (somewhat easy) profiling. A must for giclee.

In short you wont go wrong with any of these three, its just what you like.

The problems you will encounter printing giclee with solvent will be the drop size is too large, the color gamut is not large enough and the medias giclee customers ar looking for are harder to find for solvent (rag papers, watercolor papers, etc.)

The benefits of printing giclee with solvent are: Cheaper ink, cheaper media (in your case no new investment)

 

[signswi]

I hope you know a lot about photography or large format scanning as well, a good giclee shop will do it's own image capture. Not to mention advanced color management techniques. Crap In Crap Out. Just wait until you get into b&w and need a dedicated machine with carbon inksets.

Aqueous hands down: Epson 9900, 11880; HP Z6200; Canon imagePROGRAF iPF8300, imagePROGRAF iPF9100

 

[Rooster]

There's two levels of giclee out there. Decorative art and fine art. Decorative art, no problem creating it with a solvent printer. Fine art, archival quality is another matter. IMHO it's not worth going after the fine art side.

It's a real specialty niche and if you have to ask what's required, your not going to like the necessary investments required to service it.

 

[artbot]

+rooster.

the decorative side is basically designers doing hotels, hospitals, and such that need canvases and paper prints for projects. the pricing will be competive because the designer is also marking up the print to the end user. they won't care about arhival quality. interiors are usually "redone" every 15-20 years. the only thing you should be concerned about is a large piece in direct sunlight that might fade some nine or so years after you printed it. if you really wanted to go that route i'd also get some framing equipment (mat cutter, miter saw, canvas stretching machine) so you can truly service that client. they will not be impressed with the fact that you can print something. every decent frame house in metropolitan areas has a giclee printer in the back at this point.

 

[Fanaticus]

So I had to check out what Giclee was. Here's for the others who don't know either.

The Definition : Giclee (zhee-klay) - The French word "giclée" is a feminine noun that means a spray or a spurt of liquid. The word may have been derived from the French verb "gicler" meaning "to squirt".

HMMMMM.

 

[artbot]

yeah.. the art business/world is about a stupid as it can get. name digital printing in french and tada! it's not an inkjet anymore! finer galleries have stopped using the word giclee as digital mixed media (my expertise) has gained acceptance. now it's called...."inkjet".

also, back in the day i had a line of limited edition prints using stencils... referred to "pochoir". again, the french word for stencil.

 

[jumeda33]

Giclee Plotters

I was wondering why no one mentioned Roland for a Giclee plotter. They are very highly rated and in some cases listed as better than Epson.
Thanks for your input.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

I was wondering why no one mentioned Roland for a Giclee plotter. They are very highly rated and in some cases listed as better than Epson.
Thanks for your input.

Not to sound rude, but where in the world is a Roland considered better than an Epson for fine-art reproduction?

 

[Chuck Osborne]

giclee

I have been doing fine art reproduction since 04 and my printer
is a fj500 8 color. epson great for photographers but the roland
great for canvas and watercolor paper, plus its metal not plastic.
I use A digital scanback on a 4x5 sinar camera.

 

[sfr table hockey]

I was wondering why no one mentioned Roland for a Giclee plotter. They are very highly rated and in some cases listed as better than Epson.
Thanks for your input.

Ok I too am going to come out of the closet and say that I print Canvas on a Roland. Even an old Roland at that and I feel good about it..........

And so do my customers..........

I have been doing picture framing for over 10 years and the last couple years, since I picked up my first CJ 500, have boosted the business greatly. I now have 2 waterbased printers and 1 converted to solvent.

I think a person would be hard pressed to tell the difference in quality on the canvas, and I even print at 540 dpi.

Just did some wedding photos that were a bit bigger than 9 x 14 at 300 dpi and the canvas image I printed was about 22 x 32 and they look perfect.

The biggest issue is good ink and profiles. I started using the Green/Orange combo instead of the Lc/Lm and I am hitting the right colors (mainly reds) better without color correction.

For 8x10 glossy photos and small stuff it's not worth it to do on these printers. A desktop will do better for that but 90% I do is on Canvas.

 

[Rooster]

Not to sound rude, but where in the world is a Roland considered better than an Epson for fine-art reproduction?

At one point Roland was the only one with a 12 ink printer. There was some giclee guys who created a rip that could make use of all 12 channels and created some very unique inksets for it.

http://www.americaninkjetsystems.com/symphonic_evolution_giclee_and_.html

In the end a roland is just another epson head on a different chassis. Same as a mutoh or a mimaki.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

At one point Roland was the only one with a 12 ink printer. There was some giclee guys who created a rip that could make use of all 12 channels and created some very unique inksets for it.

http://www.americaninkjetsystems.com/symphonic_evolution_giclee_and_.html

In the end a roland is just another epson head on a different chassis. Same as a mutoh or a mimaki.

Oh, I didn't think about the old school HiFi Jets, I was thinking he meant newer Soljets or Versacamms, seemed like an odd statement.

 

[VinylLabs.com]

I don't know how you guys do it, but if I take a picture (lets say 10mp) which is about 3000px wide (essentially 10inches @300dpi) If I scale it 300% in photoshop and print at 300dpi, or I resize it to 30 inches wide@ 150dpi and print, the 150dpi looks better, the 300DPI canvas print has resized artifacts around the corners. i printed my second canvas last night and it looked horrible. Still trying with these prints.

also, whats the best way to laminate them? what about textured laminate? (transparent gesso)

 

[TyrantDesigner]

I use an hp 130 for my glicee printing. one day i plan on moving up to the zxxxx series of designjet but the printing quality is good, it's still dye based and most glicee printing is pigment based so you may get sticklers to that (even though print quality is better with dye i.m.o. and lasts just as long with proper lamination) all my glicee supplies come from kapco. their canvas has a better feel and ink receptability that most of the other companies i've tried. otherwise pretty much sky is the limit.

do you know if you plan on doing canvas reproductions? poster glicees? or photo prints?