Glicee Canvas Prints Opened up New World to Photographers

Anyone who has ever shopped for canvas photo prints has no doubt come across the term 'glicee.' Ever wonder what it means?

Basically, a glicee print is one made with high-quality, fade-resistant inks often used to create reproductions. The term was first commonly used starting in the early 1990s in an attempt to showcase the high quality of the reproduction. It wasn't simply a print but a glicee print using archival quality inks that elevated the art.

The process creates high quality artwork in a cost-effective way, creating a boom in the canvas photo print industry. The inkjet printers now use a process that allows for crisper, better prints, with more vibrant colors and sharper lines. It also captures subtle color fading and shadowing, making it the method of choice for companies producing high quality prints.

According to Wikepedia, glicee is a name ìfor the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-jet printing. The word "giclÈe" is derived from the French language word "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to squirt, spurt, or spray."

Because the system is computerized, the product closely matches the original image, making it a popular way to decorate a home. Today, people may have their own photos inexpensively printed on canvas to use as artwork. The process has opened up a new world to those who have beautiful photographs but no way to showcase them.

The process allows people to have single, high quality prints of their artwork at a far less expensive cost than traditional silver-halide and gelatin printing processes. In fact, the image quality of glicee prints is so high, that several major museums have showcased prints made though the process, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.

In addition, the process allows photographs to be enlarged to almost any size without losing image quality.