Giclée Printing Process

Julia O'Malley-Keyes Fine Art offers Giclée prints on Canvas which look remarkably like the original oil painting. In the near future we will also be offering unframed Giclée prints on fine art paper and lithographs of your favorite prints. Many of our collectors enjoy the way that their canvas prints look whether they are classically framed or gallery wrapped for a more contemporary presentation, while other collectors like the more traditional look of a matted and framed paper print under glass. If you would like to order your favorite print edition in a custome size please contact us at collectors@omalley-keyes.com for a quote.

Explanation of  Giclée  Printing

A Giclée Print is the closest replication of an original artwork that is currently possible. Giclée on canvas looks remarkably like the original oil painting while Giclée on fine art paper has its own charms as it is always framed with a wide mat and requires a protective glass.

Giclée is a French word meaning, "a spraying of pigments" (pronounced "zhee-clay"). With the advent of Giclée, the art of reproducing fine art works has become even more precise. Each piece of archival paper or canvas is carefully hand mounted onto a drum, which rotates during printing. Exact calculations of hue, value and density are produced by directing over four million droplets of pigment through four printer nozzles. This produces a combination of 512 chromatic changes with over three million color possibilities.

Giclées have the highest apparent resolution today-as high as 1,800 dpi-because a variable dot size is used to create the density of color on the print, instead of equally sized dots which can only achieve an effect of 600-1000 dpi. In addition, since no screens are used, the prints have a higher apparent resolution than lithographs and a color range that exceeds that of serigraphy. Displaying the full color spectrum, Giclée prints capture every nuance of an original and have gained worldwide acceptance from artists, museums and the finest galleries.

Gallery Wrap Vs. Canvas Stretching

The difference between a gallery wrap and a stretched canvas: Many people get confused between a gallery wrap and a stretched canvas. Gallery-wrap is a modern style of displaying art over thick wooden bars. It is a stretched canvas that doesn't have any visible staples or nails holding the fabric to the wooden stretcher bars so the painting could be hung unframed. Stretched canvas is something completely different. In order to have your painting framed it first has to be stretched across stretcher bars. A stretched canvas differs from a gallery wrap. First, the stretcher bars are thinner allowing the staples to show on the sides of the wood. Therefore, unlike the gallery wrap, a stretched canvas is not a finished look to hang an oil painting on the wall. Gallery-wrap is a very popular way to display art, the canvas is prepared with enough extra canvas that will allow the wrap so there will be no loss in the visible painting. A standard stretched painting or fine art print on canvas will need to be framed.