Giclee Canvas Options

In a quick count that I took before I began this writing, I found over forty different possible selections of something called Giclée canvas. One might wonder why these different canvases are available. I don’t’ have all the answers to that question, but I can help.

To begin with, many of the canvases are redundant. That is to say, they are the same or similar in construction and printability. Some of them are actually the same product with different names. I’m not intending this to be a “tell all” book, but I do think it’s worthwhile to understand what the purposes of these different categories of canvas are. You’d want to know because like every consumer, you’re interested in optimizing the quality of the product that you’re producing; the longevity of the product you’re creating, and the price that you’re paying for the different products.

Let’s talk about quality in Giclée canvas. The correct approach to an evaluation of quality in Giclée canvas has to be relative to the original piece of art in question. As an example, if the original being reproduced was a watercolor on paper…..canvas wouldn’t be appropriate at all. A watercolor produced on canvas is generally unappealing because it has that unconscious quality of fake. By this I don’t mean a forgery, I mean an inappropriate usage of the technology relative to the artist’s original intent. That’s an easy example. A more difficult one would be a choice of Giclée canvas for an oil painting. But still, there’s good reason for thought and selection.

Oil painting originals have their variegations and differences intentionally. An artist who’s beginning a creation deliberately selects a canvas weave, a canvas material content, a canvas size, a canvas weight and a canvas white point. It’s correct that in the artist’s reproduction process, he would again select the substrate that was appropriate for the look and feel that he put into the original. Of course it’s correct that any piece of art, in theory, can be printed on any piece of canvas. So, there’s a lot of room for overlapping and for casual concern.

However, some simple guidelines in choosing your giclee canvas for the reproduction of oil original would be:

Is your original a deeply saturated brilliantly colored work of art?

If it is, you’d surely want to lean in the direction of using a high gloss, high luminant canvas such as BullDog’s Platinum Dot Canvas. I don’t’ mean to plug this particular product, but I’m very familiar with it. It represents the highest capability in the category of luminance and saturation. That is to say, the light reflects back more through the inks and makes the colors appear as though looking through a stain glass window: it holds the maximum amount of ink load which allows the saturated areas to be faithfully reproduced. You’re welcome to seek any canvas in this description for your reproduction of highly colorful and bright oil original. This type of canvas is routinely used with a super gamut ink on typically a Roland printing machine.

But what if your original didn’t require all of that luminance?

Perhaps your original is a neutral piece, where the effect that you’re trying to achieve is more subdued. Perhaps a landscape of a shaded glen; In this case, a canvas that carried a lower ink load and that didn’t provide the transparence of light being reflected further away from a brilliant white base would be completely acceptable. An example of that canvas might be a Red Dot canvas printed on a Mutoh printer with OEM Mutoh inks. The color range of this canvas and this machine is completely suitable for a neutral original. The Mutoh printing machine is fast and it runs fairly easily. So why go through the extra effort for super gamut inks when the Mutoh OEM inks are just fine?

A third category of Giclée canvas needs might be for high key images, or images that don’t have a lot of saturated colors. A great example would be an image of a Snow Fox in a Snow Storm. It doesn’t take a lot of special inks or canvases to produce this type of an image, although the texture of the canvas itself would wind up being a very important element. This type of image could be easily printed with a water resist canvas. Water resist canvases are desirable because they don’t require post coating to protect the ink placement. That is, if you didn’t want to coat the print because you didn’t have the facility, you’d be well advised to print these prints on a Green Dot canvas, because it would be easier and less expensive, and at the same time, the surface of the Green Dot is a smooth chalky, all together pleasing surface.

So, if you know what you’re going to print, and you’re going to print it consistently, then it’s wise to go through the process of matching your giclee canvas and ink to the original. If you don’t know just what images you might be printing, in almost all circumstances, you’d be fine in choosing the widest gamut, highest ink load, best white point, completely luminant glossy canvas Platinum Dot. For the absolute best result, it’s really best to consult your printer relative to how the image reproduction should be handled, as there certainly are other considerations such as the way the image is captured to begin with, the particular person who’s doing the color matching, and the type of post treatment a giclee might get before it goes to market.