As to cost, giclee's are not much more expensive than a litho up to the first 100 copies. As I mentioned before, the cost to the artist of an 18X 24 print on archival material from us is $36 ($12 per sq ft); that print could profitably be sold by the artist for $72. If sold thru a salesman, say $125.00 for an outstanding image (if the original was outstanding). These are pretty good prices. The process is hardly responsible for what the pieces are actually priced at.



We have a Cruse art scanner (see crusedigital.com )that's profiled regularly with Monaco Profiler and a Hutchinson color target. Our monitors and printers are also profiled. We can produce a print that's about 90% exactly like the original on the same material as the original with no color correction beyond applying the scanner and printer profiles (we make profiles for each of the papers and canvases we use). Not much correction is necessary to come as close to the original as the gamut of the ink set will allow. Once we make a proof for the artist and it's accepted all the printer operator has to do is feed in the paper and push a button. One of the truly revolutionary aspects of the new Epson printers is they are very consistant.



Giclees are very good art reproductions and shouldn't be sold as anything but and as far as I know, they aren't. I will say, 5 years ago, Iris prints were very hard to make and color management was in its infancy so Iris prints were expensive. And they should have been. They were stunning compared to other forms of art reproduction. As long as the buyer knew the prints were not going to last, he was getting a deal. Iris printers are no longer made by Scitex (diehards can get a Zia from Improved Technologies)because they can't compete with the Epson printers so Iris prints are pretty much beside the point. Epson BTW makes the piezo electric print heads for its rivals but isn't going to license the techonology behind the 96/7600 heads. This is a rapidly changing environment and the consumer is going to be the ultimate winner with outstanding images for reasonable prices. The Epson wide format printers available today are much more reliable than the old Iris printers, have three times the resolution, and cost a fraction of what an Iris cost 5 years ago ( about what an Iris yearly service contract cost). It stands to reason that the prices of giclees are going to come down as the technology becomes more widely adopted. It's the future.



Warren