Giclée (pronounced zhee-clay or jhee-clay) is a word coined more than a decade ago to describe high quality inkjet reproduction of fine art and photos. It is derived from a French word that literally means "to spatter out." The definition provided by the Giclée Printer Association is "the highest quality print available to this culture at this time."
Equipment used to create giclee prints typically are 8- to 12-color inkjet printers (though some with as few as 6 have been used for full-color prints in the past). Printers with more inks have additional grays to uphold subtle tones in black-and-white prints without visible dot pattern.
Key to giclée quality and longevity is paper selection. Eschewing ordinary bond, high-resolution images are printed on durable museum quality archival paper worthy of the masterpieces displayed. Since papers vary in texture and brightness, each must be carefully calibrated using a spectrophotometer that measures color intensity on a given paper, saving the results in reusable profiles. Such attention to detail transforms ordinary words and pictures into works of art.