Giclee: Allpconline Company Blog
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Natural archival media for giclee
We often get calls regarding the archival properties of our materials. First off, let me explain where those 75 + years ratings for some papers come from.
The giclee process has been around for about 20 years and most of the canvas and watercolors made to print with this technology for less than that. The pigmented inks are constantly changing as well. When Iris was first used to print giclees only dyes were available, which meant sure fading in a matter of a couple of years. With the new inks, accelerated simulations point at great longevity.
What do I mean by accelerated simulations? Basically the labs put giclees in extremely high UV environments. Humidity levels and temperature are also manipulated to see in a short time what would happen over the natural life of a print. The tests are pretty accurate and have been around for a long time. Some of the most respected companies who do archival testing have been able to fine tune their procedure way before giclee, by testing ie photographic papers. Are the tests fool proof? Of course not, but considering we now are able to see giclees made with pigments that have aged over a decade, we are learning that this process is stable. As a matter of fact we believe this is the most archival process available and it will quickly become the natural choice for anyone interested in producing long lasting, beautiful artwork.
The giclee process has been around for about 20 years and most of the canvas and watercolors made to print with this technology for less than that. The pigmented inks are constantly changing as well. When Iris was first used to print giclees only dyes were available, which meant sure fading in a matter of a couple of years. With the new inks, accelerated simulations point at great longevity.
What do I mean by accelerated simulations? Basically the labs put giclees in extremely high UV environments. Humidity levels and temperature are also manipulated to see in a short time what would happen over the natural life of a print. The tests are pretty accurate and have been around for a long time. Some of the most respected companies who do archival testing have been able to fine tune their procedure way before giclee, by testing ie photographic papers. Are the tests fool proof? Of course not, but considering we now are able to see giclees made with pigments that have aged over a decade, we are learning that this process is stable. As a matter of fact we believe this is the most archival process available and it will quickly become the natural choice for anyone interested in producing long lasting, beautiful artwork.
Friday, June 03, 2005
File formats we accept for giclee
As you know from our technical page info we do prefer TIFFs and PSDs. Some of our clients send us JPEGs as well. Given the amount of requests for explanation regarding why we insist on TIFFs and PSDs is because these are formats that do not use a lossy algorythm. Let me explain: JPEG uses a mathematical formula to reduce the size of an image by taking out information and still trying to preserve image quality. Settings can be changed to provide better quality (and a larger file size) or viceversa. When saving in this format try to use the highest quality settings. Please do not open a JPEG, make changes and resave; every time this is done quality decreases.
PSD is actually a lossless compression format that Adobe created as a native file for its Photoshop application. PSD will compress when it can, for example when there is a lot of the same values like white in an image. A PSD file will never sacrifice quality and it is therefore called lossless. The matter becomes a little more complicated with the TIFF format. TIFF in its natural state is uncompressed. There is an option to save with the LZW algorythm, which is also lossless. Make sure that if you send us or anyone else an LZW TIFF for giclee reproduction, you notify of this compression option. We can of course tell when it is used but as a courtesy we appreciate the heads up. Many printer RIPs do not like compression formats. To add to the confusion, new versions of Photoshop have introduced TIFFs with JPEG compression. It would take much longer to explain all these new options and I will cover the subject in an article.
Happy printing!
PSD is actually a lossless compression format that Adobe created as a native file for its Photoshop application. PSD will compress when it can, for example when there is a lot of the same values like white in an image. A PSD file will never sacrifice quality and it is therefore called lossless. The matter becomes a little more complicated with the TIFF format. TIFF in its natural state is uncompressed. There is an option to save with the LZW algorythm, which is also lossless. Make sure that if you send us or anyone else an LZW TIFF for giclee reproduction, you notify of this compression option. We can of course tell when it is used but as a courtesy we appreciate the heads up. Many printer RIPs do not like compression formats. To add to the confusion, new versions of Photoshop have introduced TIFFs with JPEG compression. It would take much longer to explain all these new options and I will cover the subject in an article.
Happy printing!
