Beverley J. Hanna

Original prints are those created by the artist and have come to mean prints made by conventional methods such as serigraphy, stone lithography, etchings, woodcuts, monoprints and intaglio. In traditional methods, the substrate, plate or screen tends to break down during the printing process, so that the more prints that are made, the more their quality deteriorates. Signed and numbered print editions evolved in order to keep track of print quality. Original limited editions usually comprise fewer than 100 prints.

When the Lithography process came along, it became possible to create a great many more high-quality prints before the plates deteriorated to the point that they couldn't be used any longer. In addition, once the photographic colour separations were made, an unlimited number of plates could be burned from them, so in theory, there could be an infinite number of prints made from one image. Limiting an edition became an artificial way of creating scarcity, thereby inflating the value of a print. The concept of time-limited editions came into play, so that a very successful artist could still call an edition "limited", even though it might comprise many thousands of prints. Other methods of stretching the marketability of so-called "limited" editions, was to call them by different names, such as Original Edition, Publisher's Edition and so on. All it meant was that it became possible to sell several different versions of a popular image, usually varying only by making small changes in the size of the image.

With the advent of the Giclée print (pronounced Zhee-clay), a high-end computer printout using archival inks and papers and a continuous-tone inkjet process, the quality of printmaking went up again, but this time, it became possible to produce millions of prints with a quality equal to the first, so the concept of limited editions became obsolete. Limited edition giclées are still the norm in the fine-art world, but the limits are there only because it's traditional, not because of physical necessity. Now that computer-generated imaging is becoming a more frequently accepted art form, giclée printing is the output method of choice for these artists. It has also become so for reproducing fine art originals. While more expensive per print, it is initially cheaper than litho for the artist to produce prints, as it isn't necessary to purchase an entire print-run at one time. Print-on-demand is more affordable.

Original Prints are hand-pulled by the artist using silk-screens, presses, stone, metal, glass or wood to recreate the image. Usually limited to fewer than 100 prints.

Reproduction Lithos are lithographs made using a photographic process which burns a copy of the artist's original painting or photograph onto several metal plates, each of which imprints the paper with a single colour.

Reproduction Giclées are high-end inkjet prints made by scanning the original art and creating computer printouts from the digital file. Giclées cost many times more than lithos to produce, but the quality is exceptional and they are alleged to last up to 100 years before noticeable fading.

Computer-Generated Images or C.G.I.s are created in the computer, using one of the many imaging software programs available, such as PSP, Painter, Illustrator or Photoshop. There is no "original" painting or photograph, so the final output (the giclée print if printed using archival, pigment-based inks) is an original, one of however many the artist wishes to create. For this reason, many artists don't number them.

Digital Photographic Prints are created by digital photography and use computers to print the output. The images may or may not be enhanced using image mainiputation software, such as Photoshop. If the artist uses pigmented archival inks with papers that are chemically matched to the inks, the resulting prints are called giclées. Otherwise, it's a normal inkjet print. Again, there's no "original" so many artists don't number the final prints, keeping them as open editions rather than artificially limiting them.