FAQ's Archives - Page 2 of 2 - The Artists Print Room (Giclée Printing)

Ordering your fine art giclée prints

When it comes to ordering your fine art giclée prints, it can be a confusing process, with so many options to be aware of. Here at The Artist’s Print Room, we have tried our best to ensure our online ordering system is straight forward and easy to use.

Firstly, head over to our online shop. You’ll find this option at the top of our website. The blue box saying ‘Order Here!’ will take you directly through to our online ordering system.

By heading through to our online shop, you will see the following four options:

From here, to order giclée prints, head over to the printing option. Here you will see a number of different options, including deckled edge prints, poster printing, greetings cards and print proofs. If you’re not sure how your final print will look or your just starting out in the world of producing your artwork or photography as giclée prints, it might be worth considering print proofs in the first instance.

Print Proofs

Our print proofs are 280x120mm as standard (other size options are available though). You can order print proofs on any of the fine art substrates that we offer and prices start at just £7.50. Print proofs give you the best opportunity to take a closer look at the colours, substrates and quality of our products before committing to a full sized print.

Giclée Printing

If you’re ready to go ahead and order your giclée prints, then head straight to our online order form. Here you will be taken step-by-step through the options available to you. Firstly, you will need to select your print size. You can order generic paper sizes or alternatively bespoke print sizes. Prices here start at £9.00 for an A5 print.

Secondly, you can add a plain border to your print. If you’ve added a border to your print file already, please make sure to select the relevant option. Alternatively, you can ask us to add one on for you and let us know what size you would like this.

Then comes the exciting bit! Select from our wide range of substrates available. Take your pick from our gloss, matt or textured fine art papers. We have 15 papers to select from plus two canvas substrates.

Following on from your substrate selection you can add on the option of having a certificate of authenticity. These are a great addition, particularly if your print is part of a limited edition. Once you’ve completed all these stages you will receive a bespoke price according to your selections. Please note, we also offer discounts on multiple orders starting at six prints. If you have a print run of over 100, please do contact us for further information and pricing.

There you go! Ordering your giclée prints is as simple as that! Once you’ve added your products to basket, follow our simple instructions to upload your files, then sit back and relax! Your order will be on the way to you shortly. We will be in touch if there are any issues or questions, additional, please feel free to contact us if you have any questions too!

Did you know that we are the only fine art printing company in the UK which has been accredited by Canson Infinity, Hahnemühle Fine Art, Epson Digigraphie, ILFORD and a member of the Fine Art Trade Guild? Also, why not sign up to our mailing list to keep up to date with news, products and future competitions at The Artist’s Print Room – just complete the form below.

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram too!

Limited Edition Giclée Prints

When reproducing your artwork, one of the major considerations often surrounding this, is how many prints should you include in your print run. There are many ‘rules’ surrounding the concept of limited edition giclée prints and here we hope to answer some of those questions to make your process much easier!

What is a limited edition giclée print?

To begin with and to put it simply, a limited edition print is a set of prints of the exact same image which will only be produced to a maximum number eg. 100. These series of prints will always look exactly the same when processes such as accurate colour correction and artwork reproduction are followed. It is also worth noting, all prints in your edition do not have to printed at the same time either avoiding the costly overheads – you can print as required (eg. when you sell a copy – see our on demand section here).

The ‘rules’

One of the most comprehensive resources surrounding this topic comes from The Fine Art Trade Guild. The Fine Art Trade Guild provides a lot of excellent guidance on how limited edition giclée printing should work. Firstly, it is recommended that a limited edition print run is kept to below 850 prints worldwide, however, you can have as few prints as you like. This also includes any artist’ proofs. But it is worth considering that the lower the edition run, the ‘rarer’ your prints will be – potentially this can be good for resale, however, the more prints produced, the higher the potential income initially. This is really for the artist to decide upon as it depends on your objectives and purpose. We can of course, help advise and give guidance if required.

The Fine Art Trade Guild also states that, ‘a limited edition print is based on an agreement between the licensor, usually the artist or artist’s estate, as a holder of the copyright, and the licensee, usually the publisher.’ The licensor should agree that no previous reproductions have been made and will not be produced again for publication. The publisher will also agree to not exceed the agreed print run which has previously been specified.

Additionally, to comply as a limited edition giclée print run, the image should not be produced in any other format, anywhere in the world. This includes on other items such as mugs or other items for example, or as a different sized print. However, there is an exception in that it can be printed for promotional purposes in items such as brochures or books.

All print edition details should be included in the certificate of authenticity which is provided with the print included which print number the specific print is and out of how many.

You don’t always need to limit!

Alternatively, you don’t need to ‘limit’ your print production and you can produce open edition prints. Basically, this means you can print as many as you like in whichever formats you like! Again, this is your personal choice and agreements need to be put in place. However, it is worth considering the sales value and resale potential with open editions can be much less than with limited edition prints. With limited edition prints you tend to find that there is value added due to the uniqueness and exclusivity. Open edition prints are much better suited to mass production and high turnovers.

Why not sign up to our mailing list to keep up to date with news, products and future competitions at The Artist’s Print Room – just complete the form below.

Understanding Printing – Talks for art groups & photographic societies

Understanding Printing

The world of printing can be daunting, that’s why we offer talks to photographic groups and societies in addition to art clubs and groups. We can explain some of the processes behind fine art printing and workflow to give you an understanding of what goes on behind the scenes.

What does this entail?

Firstly, we will give you a brief understanding and an introduction to giclée printing including the history of the process. Additionally, we will cover the four most vital aspects of giclée printing; resolution, inks, papers and of course the printer. Furthermore, for art groups we will cover the topic of artwork reproduction photography.

Our presentation is a great opportunity to get ‘hands on’ with all the different papers and canvases that we offer. Samples of both our prints and substrates will be on display for you to see first hand.

We also cover aspects such as copyright law, the principles of Limited Edition prints, how to publicise your work on social media and also touching upon some laws and regulations you may need to be aware of.

Don’t just take our word for it though:

‘Fabulously interesting and very useful- been looking for someone that can print my work as I want it & such interesting info. So very useful to my art practice so thank you.’

‘Really useful session – full of all the things you wouldn’t think of or have time to ask!’

‘Very interesting technical background to colour and substrates. Interesting to me as a photographer.’

The evening will be an opportunity to bring along any of your work in addition to asking all those burning questions that you’ve never had answered before.

So, whether you’re a member or organiser of an art group or photographic club, please get in touch about our understanding printing talks and we can discuss your requirements and tailor each to the specific needs of your group.

Jargon Buster

The world of print can be a little daunting, with so many different terms and acronyms it can be hard to understand what everything actually means! Here we’ve gone through some of the key terms and phrases you may stumble across and produced this little jargon buster. Think of it as your new go to printing dictionary! If there are any that you think we may have missed or would like us to explain, please just let us know and we will continue to expand the list below. You can contact us here or submit your questions and terms via Facebook or Twitter.

Bleed – The area of printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet after trimming.

CMYK – Four base colours that are used in printing workflow. Stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (which is black).

Colour Cast – Unwanted colour within an image that affects either the entire print or just an area of print.

DPI – Dots per inch.

Fine Art Paper – Usually acid free and is a high quality substrate. We look into fine art paper in more detail in our previous blog article.

Gamut – Limits of shades and hues that can be displayed or printed.

GSM – Base weight of paper per square meter.

ICC – This is a set of data that characterises a colour input or output device or alternatively a colour space. This is according to standards set by the International Color Consortium. Each individual paper type/printer combination has a different ICC profile.

JPEG – This stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group – they coined this term. A lossy compression type for digital images and often the most common format type for storing and transmitting images across the internet.

Limited Edition – A print that is limited to a predetermined print quantity, as outlined on the certificate of authenticity. We will be looking into limited edition prints in a future blog post.

Long Grain and Short Grain – The fibres of the paper run parallel to the long side of the paper in long grain or parallel to the short dimension if short grain. Useful information when producing books or folded items as it can affect the quality of the crease of the fold.

Open Edition – Similar or identical prints that do not have assigned numbers.

Photo Paper – A standard go to paper choice for more day to day printing. Not as high quality as fine art paper, however, still a popular option.

Proof – Test sheet or section of a print to reveal how the final print will look. Used to ensure colours are produced accurately.

RGB – Stands for red, green and blue.

Substrate – The material the print is on, in our case this would either be paper or canvas.

TIFF – The term was created by Aldus Corporation. A lossless file format for storing images. When submitting your artwork to us for printing, we request a TIFF file with no compression.