What Is A Gicleé?

     Gicleé (jhee-clay) refers to a relatively new method of creating limited edition prints. The giclee process is initiated by scanning the original painting with a highly sensitive scanner, thereby creating an extremely high resolution digital image of the artwork. The image is printed onto canvas by a special printer using archival inks that are guaranteed to go give fade and color shift resistance of better than 100 years. Since the digital image includes every subtlety and nuance of the original, including the smallest details of light, shadow and color, the fine art gicleé often is indistinguishable from the original work of art. The finished print is sprayed with a protective coating and mounted on archival board or stretched on a rigid frame. Other advantages of gicleés are that they cost much less than the original and can be reproduced to almost any size.     
    
     Couture’s offers limited edition gicleés on canvas prints in small limited editions of from 50 to 250 prints, depending on painting and size of image.

What Is A Lithograph?

     A lithograph is a high-quality printing process for fine art, using archival paper to reproduce fine art in limited editions of 250 to 2,000. The art is photographed and processed by four or more color plates used on high quality presses to print the work.

     The artist is traditionally present during the process and assures the quality of the art before signing and numbering each print. The color press plates are then destroyed to prevent future use for the limited edition art.