Welcome to the Zen of Giclée

Just about everyone I've told about this new blog is saying, "...it's about time!" That's because there aren't too many places you can go to get the full story about how to make giclée art. Now there is at least one, and you are there.

You will discover that this blog is like hearing about sailing from a guy who has sailed around the world. The wrinkles around a sailor's eyes are from squinting at the sun. Mine are also from squinting ... first spotting photo prints with extra-fine brushes for 35 years, and now perfecting giclée prints and peering at microdots through 10X loupes.

Making pictures has been the focus of my life for a half a century. I teach giclée printing at Vashon Island Imaging, a fine-arts printing company that I own and operate from Vashon Island, Washington (you can see full details at www.vashonislandimaging.com). I've also taught PhotoShop® at BCIT in Vancouver (British Columbia Institute of Technology).

My experiences teaching others taught me that there is a disconnect between people and printing. People know how to make great pictures in PhotoShop®, but many don't realize that is just the beginning of a two-step process.

The first step is perfecting the picture and the second step is doing 'prepress' work to adapt the image for specific output devices, be those devices giclée printers, audiovisual screens or anything in between.

Prepress is the name given to a wide range of adjustments that bring an image's dynamic tone range and "look" in line with the gamut and "character" of the output device. Prepress can make or break a picture in the same way that darkroom wizards make the best photo prints. There's a lot to it... enough to fill a 272-page book.

There are many levels of prepress. On the basic side there's what I call "technical prepress" that includes the minimum necessary to correctly output a client's image. At the other end of the spectrum there's 'creative prepress' which is interpretive and can be considered a 'black art'.

This blog (and my book) are for those who pursue 'creative prepress'... the Zen of Giclée. If you are passionate about making the perfect giclée, welcome aboard. This blog is for you.

In the book I have broken down the process of making giclée art into thirteen steps. Starting with the concept of the picture, through prepress work and printing, to finishing and display lighting. It is a single-source reference book for 'everything about giclée'.

The purpose of this blog is to become an extension of the book and an online 'forum' about Giclée Zen in general. If you have read the book we'll both be speaking the same language. But even if you haven't read it the stuff in this blog will be edifying if you know anything about PhotoShop® and/or printing. That said, I assume that you have a working knowledge of PhotoShop® and if you don't some of this might be over your head.

My mission is to help people make better prints of their pictures. The happier people are with their pictures, the more pictures they will make. So I don't think I am putting myself out of business by telling everyone my 'trade secrets' of giclée prepress. Au contraire, if your pictures look good, you look good. I like it when people look at the prints of their pictures and say 'that's incredible'. (Besides, the more prepress you do, the less I have to do...!)

Some of you are 'do-it-yourselfers' and the rest bring their images to professional giclée shops like Vashon Island Imaging. If you're a 'DIY' (do-it-yourselfer) then you are in control and have no one else to blame for a bad print. If you outsource your printing, then you are at the mercy of their prepress artist... if they even have one (and many places don't). Print shop quality runs the gamut (pun intended). On the one hand there's the 'Walmart®' or 'Costco®' service and at the other end of the spectrum are custom shops like Vashon Island Imaging.

Many printing outfits only do technical prepress and are focused on faithfully reproducing your image based on the file you gave them. They are not going to improve the image, even though it might well be possible to make a substantially better print with a little 'creative prepress'. It's like Walmart® vs 'The Wizards' and generally you get what you pay for.

Take Ansel Adam's work as an example. Only certified darkroom wizards are allowed to print the master's negatives because they are so complicated in terms of burning and dodging. Those dramatic skies and extended dynamic tone range that are his signature style are not easily reproduced in the photographic prints. And so it goes in giclée printing.

People attending the Digital Imaging Seminars that I conduct at Vashon Island Imaging are astounded to see how their own pictures can be 'developed' for an extended dynamic tone range and then further modified to take into consideration the type of media being printed upon and the coating applied to the final print. A single image file cannot look its best on both glossy and matte-finish media... one or both will need adjustment to match the image contrast with the contrast of the media surface (ie., matte surfaces produce scatter light which 'fogs' the dark tones and move the black point right off the histogram). Matte prints have no real black, and all tones appear more 'pastel'.

When I refer to extending the dynamic tone range, part of that is the 'development' of highlight and shadow details in the picture -- which are exactly the same kind of modifications made by photographic darkroom printers. It's a question of balancing the tones by working up the 'rare tones' that were in the original scene but which were obliterated by the averaging algorithms that the image has likely encountered on it's way to you, for printing.

90% of the the images that come to Vashon Island Imaging have clogged-up dark tones and burned out light tones. Most of these problems are the result of 1.) averaging algorithms and 2.) people working on light-emitting RGB monitors to make pictures that will be output with CMYK inks onto reflective media. The pictures may look good on your RGB monitor in PhotoShop®, but that file will not print very well without prepress adjustments to control the light and dark tones. Burned out areas can be restored with color tones and details can be pulled out of the shadows. And that's just the beginning.

Stay tuned... there's more to come.

Thanks for reading so far.