Giclee vs Gelatin Printing
If you know me, or have read any of my past posts you will know I love to print my photographs. That all started in the late 80’s and early 90’s when photography was a day job and I had a darkroom at home. No SD cards or photoshop, the only way to see your images was to process the film and then print the image. You crafted your techniques and eventually got better and better at it, just like any other creative process. But today traditional darkroom printing has been replaced by a digital process that aims to emulate it. My photographer friends each have different editing workflows but ultimately we are all trying to achieve the same thing, an image that best represents our own creative style. However, in today’s world it is rare that the image goes beyond its digital confines, we tend to share or sell our images on the internet in one medium or another and a printed version now holds a higher status. In many ways it reminds me of my son throwing money at buying vinyl records of music he already owns on CDs and can access anywhere via Spotify.
I have this phrase I use when shooting, it’s a standard I set myself to “take photos that are print worthy”. This is not a measure of cost or time, but simply quality. I know I have taken a decent photograph when it is worthy of going to the final stage of being printed. And even then there could be versions from a set that don’t make the final cut as the printing process is an art form of its own and causes you to look at your work in another context. I find the very physical act of holding a photograph in my hands makes me much more critical of my work.
All of this is very much ingrained in me, a habit from spending so much of my youth in the darkroom. I often say printing is in my DNA and I know it impacts how I edit today in Photoshop.
I have traded my darkroom in for today’s digital equivalent and whilst I do miss my days in the darkroom, I am very pleased with the results you can achieve with today’s digital printing processes. For the past year I have been sending my photos off to a printer in Hungary, a chap called Jozef who I know I can trust to achieve the same care and attention to a print that I would have done back in the days when I had my darkroom.
But I thought it might be interesting to compare my past gelatin prints with modern giclee (digital) prints. In this blog post I have included photos of the prints as well as a couple of videos of me talking through the differences that I see between the two techniques.
I will say that I am more familiar with printing than I am at mastering the compression options when uploading a video to YouTube! So please scroll down to see a few stills of the same prints seen in the video.
I always edit my photos in colour first and then convert them to black and white. My heart favours the B&W, a habit born of my past I’m sure, but I am also very influenced by some of the 90’s fashion photographers who also favoured B&W. When I share my images on Instagram I often ask people to pick their favourites, colour or B&W and I thought I would do the same here in this follow on video below. These images of Carrie in her hat are some of my favourite I’ve taken this year. I think I like the simplicity most.
Below are some of the same photographs seen in the video along with a few thoughts on how I think they turned out.
Above. This is a portrait of Rhodé. The image on the left hand side is printed on to Tecco FineArt Rag 295gr. On the right hand side is Canson Platine Fibre Rag.
The two papers are very similar in weight and texture, but the real difference is with the depth of blacks the Fine Art paper provides. This is particularly obvious in the richer blacks in the fabric of Rhodé’s shirt but also in her eyes.
Above are two prints of Anna. The left hand image is Edition Etching Rag and the right had side is Platine Fibre Rag. Both are very similar weights but the Edition Etching has a much more matt feel to it and a texture that is like a very fine watercolour paper, it’s a joy to hold. My snap of the prints has too much contrast meaning the left hand image looks worse to the eye, so you will just have to trust me that this is the better paper at bringing out the detail. It has a real fine art feel to it and also produces superior depth in the range on blacks and greys in this image.
These two are of Marisa taken in NYC. I had them printed using a slightly larger 8*12 format that is truer to the full frame of a digital or 35mm camera. These are both printed with Platine Fibre Rag and are a great example of that paper being consistently good.
I love this shot of Elena, this was taken in Greenwich in London in January 2024. A cold studio that was more of a wood workshop and we used the products as props. I wanted to see this image printed as not only do it meet my mark for being printworthy, but I also wanted to test the range of greys that the paper would yield. Once again, Platine Fibre Rag doing a great job!
These two images (above and below) are both of Kate. Above was taken in Sicily in May 23 and below was in NYC in October 23. I know, I’m very lucky to travel so much and the image below was luck as we literally bumped into each other in. NYC. Once again, I’d prefix this with a photo of print that is then uploaded and compressed when added to a blog is not the best medium to share a physical image. But I hope you can see the richness and depth of the tones in these images and as I said before, a good example of Platine Fibre Rag being constantly good.
These two below are my ‘Still Life’ image and rare slice of colour from me. I also have this image printed much larger and in this case I think it’s a case of the print being better represented in the video. I will say I love the colour version here, not least because it did a superb job at matching my finished colours on screen.
These final images are really just to share the physical images used in my video. The left hand side was printed with an Ilford silk stock and that is compared to Platine Fibre Rag on the right. The shot on the left hand side was taken with my Mamiya RB67 and a 90mm lens using Kodak PxP 120 mm film. I then processed the film in my darkroom and printed the image. Somehow that was over 25 years ago now so it is good to know that these prints last. Another great reason to always print your images!
The image on the right is of Carrie. I used these two images as my comparison mainly as I liked the similar mood in them (I’m always drawn to expressions). But also they were both taken with daylight (no studio lights) and both have a good range of detail and blacks and whites.
My summary here in this little case study is that after a year of doing this I am pleasantly surprised with how good the quality is of decent giclee printing. There is certainly a unique quality to the finish of a gelatin print that is very hard to match, but that is intertwined with traditional film photography so it’s hard for me to directly compare like for like. We live in a world where many photographers are going back to film for this very reason, but at the same time the desire to print an image is growing and the fine art papers are challenging what we knew to be the norm. Whilst I know I would enjoy revisiting a darkroom, that feels more like a one-off event like a birthday present my wife might buy me. But I know I can print my photographs any day of the week and achieve results that rival my past gelatin prints so for me, this is my way forward.
I now just need to figure out a way to pick a paper to use each time I want to order a print. If you enjoy printing and paper you might like this previous post I did on the various paper types that you can pick from when using giclee printing
Links: Printer: ReMac (Jozef) Paper: Canson | Tecco
