Online source for Giclees?

[Michele Rushworth]

Does anyone know of a good online source for giclee prints?

I'm looking to produce one each of some of my portraits, printed on canvas, so I can frame them to use in displays.

I'd like to find something in the moderate range of price and quality. For my purposes I don't need the absolute best in terms of archival characteristics, though very good color matching is important.

[Steven Sweeney]

While trying to locate a site for MicroPix (curiously, I cannot find one -- I'll keep looking), I stumbled across this page for an outfit called the Crimson Atelier. You might want to look into it.

There was a time when you had to invest thousands of dollars and wind up with dozens or hundreds of reproductions. Now for a relatively modest set-up fee, you can get as few as one print (MicroPix) or 15 (Crimson Atelier). At MicroPix (assuming they're still around!), you can then just contact them to purchase as many additional prints as you want, when you want them.

[Steven Sweeney]

No luck yet on Micropix, but another printer that advertises often in the various art magazines is Color Q Inc. I don't see specific pricing on their website. You might want to send for an info packet.

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

I used MicroPix about seven years ago to make copies of my painting "Ladybug," of a little girl on a beach. The process wasn't very precise and I had to keep sending back the proofs because they kept making the image too pale, as though it were a watercolor instead of an oil. They blamed the 4x5 positive and said that it wasn't saturated enough (or something.) I finally got a result that I liked, but I think it would have been a great deal easier if I could have brought the painting there for them to scan and compare with their own version of it. The only way we ever approached the color of the original was through my sending them a decent photo of the picture. I don't know where they are now; maybe they don't have a web presence. I'll have to check to see whether they've changed their name but I thought I noticed them advertising fairly recently in the artist mags.

I also solicited information from ColorQ and their costs were higher and they required you to order more copies than I needed.

I suspect that finding a local source of giclees would be the answer. Someone just opened up that service in an adjacent small town and I've considered trying them out.

[Valerie Gudorf]

I engaged the services of Micropix a couple of years ago in order to satisfy demands from my immediate family for copies of the kid with the red boat you see on the Drawing Forum, and was very disappointed.

I had been reading about how wonderful the giclee process is for rendering copies of original art, with fidelity so exacting it's hard to discern the original from the copy without a magnifying glass. I was happy that I could order just a few copies, thereby fulfilling my very limited demand for such, and still have money left over to buy groceries. It was not available to send the original to Micropix, which is just as well in my view, because they do not insure the safety of your art work, stating only that "reasonable care" will be taken in its storage and handling. So I employed the services of a professional photographer with quite a bit of experience photographing art work. I watched him produce three 4x5 bracketed transparencies of my work which I felt were very well done, and sent the one which appeared to be exposed most acurately off to Micropix.

The first proof I received was horrible. It was very dark and lacked subtlety in the values, resulted in value clumping. The red boat, which was the only color in the drawing returned a grayed down, cool red, whereas in the original, the boat is quite a bit warmer and brighter, expressing both temperature and value shifts to account for the rake of sunlight across its structure. There was an overall green cast to the graphite which comprised the rest of the drawing, and worst of all, there was a graininess caused by very obvious pixalation. I received four different proofs before I had something I felt I could live with. All efforts to personally speak with the person assigned to produce my order were in vain. Twice I called, requesting to do so. Twice I was promised that someone would call me. I never heard a word.

The final product was still less than satisfying. It is very easy to discern the original drawing from the Micropix copies---no magnifying glass needed. There is quite a bit of pixalation, which I'd hoped would be corrected. I had to go back into the copies with a pencil to downplay this effect. Everyone who saw a side by side comparison was appalled at the discrepancies. That which I posted in the Drawing Forum is a digital photo of a Micropix copy. I have not seen the original drawing in a over two years, so this print is starting to look "normal" now.

I have since seen ads in art magazines from other Giclee companies, expresssing that they understand the importance of working personally with artists to insure satisfactory results. Should I ever decide to undertake this process again, it will certainly not be with Micropix.

[Steven Sweeney]

If Micropix is still doing business (previously in New York, I believe), they apparently don't have any web presence, so I guess that's a cold trail in any event.

Another company to investigate: Giclee By The Bay (Morro Bay, that is, in California). They have some spelling difficulties (they offer a "Gaurantee", for example), which may or may not reflect the level of attention to detail.

By the way, I'm just passing along links. I don't have experience good or bad with any of these outfits.

[Julianne Lowman]

My first "Limited Edition" painting was yet another learning experience (a rather expensive one).

My first mistake was that I didn't make an accurate color copy of the original. When the proof came, it looked o.k. with the exception of lint all over it, which I circled for correction and they fixed. I ordered 400 prints and 5 prints on canvas.

When I received the order, I found the prints to be significantly magenta, thus making grass look muddy and the sky lavender. The prints on canvas were so purple I threw them away.

I found out later from a very experienced wildife artist that ColorQ doesn't even keep the original in the same building as the printing process, so they don't even compare the two. If it turns out well it's purely by luck.

Why do most of my learning experiences have to do with MONEY or neurotic clients?

[Steven Sweeney]

Sounds like everyone needs to consider the long-term investment value in acquiring their own large-format scanner or top-end digital camera and Epson archival-ink printer and run the show according to their own standards and preferences. (That happens to be in my business plan. I hate putting quality control of my work into others' hands. It's a neurosis, I know, but it's mine and I'm stickin' with it.)

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

Steve, that depends on how much time you want to spend learning to achieve excellent results with your own equipment. My experience trying to print from tiffs on my Epson 900 doesn't inspire confidence in home solutions to producing good copies. I'm still having enough trouble getting decent results in Photoshop and then having the image look equally good on the web. I have books and references on the process but I resent having to spend that much time on what should just be an ancillary process, not the main point of my days.

I'm probably going to try the local frame shop which just invested in giclee equipment and see how my copies turn out. A pastel artist I know managed to get wonderful results from a giclee outfit and his prints are so close to the originals that the difference is almost undetectable.

[Steven Sweeney]

Agreed, Leslie -- the last thing in the world I want to do is learn any more about computers and software. If I were that interested in it and in devoting thousands of hours' worth of time to it, I'd have picked up the Computer Science degree. I also very rarely move out of "Automatic" modes with my digital camera, and thankfully I get satisfactory results.

But now we're really in a bind -- can't find a good printing company, and don't want to become a slave to home-based peripherals.

You said:

A pastel artist I know managed to get wonderful results from a giclee outfit

Perhaps you could sleuth out the name of the outfit for us and we'd be headed for home plate.