A little bit more about fine art printing

You’ve probably read it before somewhere, fine art prints, giclée prints, museum quality prints, archival prints, there are so many names for it, but basically they all mean the same thing.

Fine art printing hasn’t been around for quite a long time by art standards. The procedure was developed around 1990 by Jack Duganne. He settled for the name giclée, based on the french word gicler which means ‘to squirt out’.

But you might ask yourself, what makes a print a fine art print and I will give it my best shot to explain it to you. First of all, for fine art prints you must use acid free paper. The acids in paper cause the desaturation and fading of the print over time and that’s something we want to prevent. While there are many paper mills around the world which manufacture fine art printing paper, there are two big names in the industry. Hahnemühle, a German company which was founded in 1584 and the English company Innova Papers. Both produce a wide range of fine art papers and canvas and I use both of them.

Next, there’s the ink. For a long lasting print, it’s important to use pigment ink instead of dye ink. Even tho Hewlett-Packard and Brother produce pigment ink printers, there are two big names in the industry being Canon and Epson. Both have pigment ink that are guaranteed to last over 100 years without fading. And agian, printers of both brands are being used by me to produce my prints.

So, if you’re in the market for a nice print that will last for a very long time without degrading, I’d like to invite you to take a look around at my site and maybe you’ll find something to your taste.