help with high quality print! giclee or inkjet?

[ninadora]

hi,

I am new to the forum, thanks in advance for any input.

by training I'm a textile designer, so I have very little experience with the ins and outs of printing.

I was commissioned to do a project for a couple who are getting married. It's a decorative marriage license written in Hebrew, that needs to be archival as these things are family heirlooms.

the art work is gauche and ink which is scanned and formatted with the Hebrew text in photoshop, then printed on 140 lb. hot press rag paper

I have been planing on doing a giclee print because its archival and i had also heard from people that the print really looks like paint...(extremely important) i do not want this to look like it came from a computer.

asked a friend about giclees recently and her opinion was that rather than do a giclee i should go to a great shop and have the print done on inkjet.

she is a professional photographer, so we want opposite looks for our prints. is there anyone out there who has experience with this?

will the inkjet printer give me the effect of looking like paint, or a handwritten document?

thanks!
nina

[hewligan]

Giclee is just a fancy name for inkjet printing to make it sound more artistic. They're the same thing.

Depending on the place you go to, the fact that they're calling it giclee may mean they're using better quality inks or it may just mean they're charging you a lot more for having a fancy name :p

Either way, it's the same thing. Do all the same things you would normally do to find a decent quality printer, and don't worry about what they call it.

[ninadora]

oh yeah, makes sense, i guess what i'm referring to is the use of pigment inks vs. dye based ones which i hear are now (depending on type) archival.

its the final look i'm concerned with. will the pigment ink look more like the artwork.

[PrintDriver]

Pigment or dyebase doesn't matter as far as looking like paint. They look the same. If you want the print to look like artwork, it's the texture of the print material you want to specify.

You want pigmented ink. Lasts longer than dye base. You want to check what the printer is using and check the Wilhelm rating of the materials. For instance, An Iris print using Lyson inks on Somerset Velvet Paper is rated for 20-25 years before noticeable fading occurs (the Iris printer was THE standard of giclèe printing when the term first appeared) whereas an Iris print using American Ink Jet inks are only rated for 4-6 years on the same paper.

On the other hand, some of the newest Epson wide format machines are boasting 200 years on matched ink/paper systems. Believe that if you want. I had a print broker buddy tell me "Ya, sure, in the dark under your bed..."

The things that will kill an inkjet are sunlight and ozone. It needs to be tightly framed under glass, or better, under UV prohibitive plex (Acrylite OP3).

Ask for museum quality materials and buyer beware.

[KyZiX]

Designjet 5500, Pigment, HP Canvas. After stretching to the frame I shot it with Krylon Crystal Clear. It's not obviously faded after 5 years. 3ft X 6ft print on my wall, no glass, just hung with a nail. :)
Really depends on what you want to get out of the print you spend the $$ for. Mine was cheap.

[PrintDriver]

LOL. Krylon is not an "archival" product....
Note "family heirloom", not print on wall with nails.
:D
But we occasionally use HP5500 prints for some short term museum exhibits. The print quality is very nice.

[ihadlegs]

I really must stop posting in the middle of the night when I find the most inappropriate things hilarious... some time ago a friend was telling me about a Gicleé print she had just commisioned and paid the average weekly salary of a 1940's fishermans wife having done - She then told me it was pronounced Jiz lee... Chuckling will stop...

[PrintDriver]

I got some outdated info up there. I just pulled a 2007 Wilhellm paper. AIJ inks on an Iris are now rated at 70 years in the accerated fading tests...