The Invisible Man

If you're a giclée printer like me, The Invisible Man has nothing on you. There are few professions where you can be as invisible as you can be when you are a giclée prepress artist. We are invisible in more ways than one. To begin with, we are out of people's minds, which fully qualifies as a form of 'invisible'. Then, our work is invisible if it is good. Thirdly, information about giclée prepress is largely invisible. Aside from this blog and my book, there is almost nothing else out there... which is why I started all this. To bring the subject of prepress to people's attention because it is important but overlooked by most picture professionals.

PhotoShop® is ubiquitous and so are good cameras and picture printers. Just yesterday I overheard a mother and her 7-year-old daughter looking at a book in a shop. The mom was explaining the cover picture to her daughter: '...they just PhotoShop'd that a little over here, see?' We've come a long way in digital imaging.

People know how to make good pictures, but they don't realize that prepress adjustments must be made to make those pictures print as well as they possibly can. Many people don't even know what 'prepress' means, let alone what to do. They don't realize that their prints could be improved at least 10-20% with proper prepress. This information gap has led to a consciousness gap making it all... invisible.


Giclée prepress is like the icing on the cake. It's something that improves something else that is already good. You don't need cake decorations to enjoy a good piece of cake. That is the Zen of patisserie as taught to me by Stefan Petterson when I apprenticed for his bakery at the NK department store in Stockholm back in the mid Eighties. Stefan, pictured above, is a world-class pattisseur with many international awards.

Giclée prepress is like that. Good pictures are fundamentally good in their own right and output on the average giclée printer will likely look just fine. If that weren't true we wouldn't be where we are right now and you wouldn't be reading this. The question is, what if you want more? Doesn't matter why, you just want more. I found myself in that position after a month of apprenticing at a bread bakery down the street from my studio on Hornsgatan in Stockholm. You can only go so far with bread. I wanted to move up to patisserie and so I was introduced to Stefan.

Besides patisserie Stefan taught me one of the many meanings of the Swedish word 'lagom'. Translated literally it means 'enough' which is a very fitting metaphor for both cake decorating and giclée prepress. How do you know when the decoration is 'just right'? The same way you know when the inks are printing 'lagom'.

Visibility is the big difference between cake decorating and giclée prepress work. The finishing touches of a good cake decorator 'make the cake' by giving it a 'look'. Giclée prepress, on the other hand, is supposed to be unseen to the extent that it requires a deft hand to keep the tone balances and contrasts lagom. We've all seen heavy-handed prepress work and it isn't a pretty picture.

Giclée prepress is like The Invisible Man for another reason. The character in H.G. Wells 1897 novelette was a scientist who believed that by adjusting the refraction of someone just so, that person would become invisible. Now I ask you, isn't that exactly what a good giclée prepress artist does? We try to make embellishments which bring out the rare tones in pictures but leave no trace of our work. Viewers should almost subconsciously realize that they are looking at a super-high-quality image. Only connoisseurs will appreciate the extended dynamic tone range developed by the prepress work, and take note of the lagom inking of dark tones and highlights.

Giclée prepress is also as invisible as Zen. It's a state of mind, for the artist and viewers. To achieve excellence in any field requires considerable perseverance. Perseverance develops one's 'Zen'. When artists have mastered the technique and craft of their disciplines, their minds are free to create anything. For the giclée prepress artist that means almost any 'problem' can be fixed... your giclée can be as close to perfect as possible (while you and your work remain totally invisible!). For the viewer extra 'Zen' derives from the added depth of tones and detail in a fine piece of giclée art.

A simple experiment can prove the point. Make two prints of the same picture after prepressing only one first. Show the pictures to people and ask them to choose. The results will be like the dog always choosing the structured water... the prepressed picture will win every time because people inherently sense visual quality. Whether they recognize it is another story.

The art of giclée is adding to a picture that special 'je ne sait quois' that separates any 'best of class'. Almost without exception, great pictures have copious tonal details and contrasts that give our eyes plenty to scan, and our minds much more to absorb. A picture made of a thousand colors is by nature much more complex than a picture made of only 100 colors.

Giclée prepress artists operate 'behind the curtain', supporting the artists whose work they will print. The average image file we get for giclée printing at Vashon Island Imaging (my fine-arts printing and publishing company) is deficient. Highlights are generally blown out and dark tones clogged up. This is a pity... not for our customers, but for those who take their work to the average digital print shop where very little or no prepress work is done to improve the picture. That is why it is important to try to do as much of the prepress work as you can before you take your files to the printer. Actually, that applies to any kind of printing, not just giclée.

Ok, you say, I get it. But what is 'prepress' and how do I learn it? Up until now, real information about giclée prepress has been invisible too. That is why I teach digital imaging and prepress at Vashon Island Imaging. There are seminars and private instruction, which some prefer. It's very inexpensive because my goal is to teach people as much as I can about prepress work... that saves me time and energy for better things... the real finishing touches, rather than the fundamentals. If people know how to prepress their pictures for printing, the results they get will be better. Then we will all be happier.

Don't want to come to Vashon Island for a seminar? Then read about it in my book, Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée (www.gicleeprepress.com). It's a 'thriller' written for professional giclée prepress artists and all those who aspire to pixel-perfect printing. There you will find complete instructions about how to make your work -- and possibly yourself -- invisible!