Up until recently, the term giclée print was synonymous with a fine art Iris print, which set the standard for excellence for over a decade. However, now there are a variety of quality printers using long lasting, or archival inks on artists papers and coated inkjet media, such as the Epson, Roland, Hwelitt Packard and Colorspan models.

A Fine Art Iris print is a very high quality digital ink jet print made by an Iris printer. This printer, capable of printing 10 million colors, uses a continuous tone technology in which infinitely small pixels of color can render the finest detail and vibrancy of the original image, with very little loss of resolution or color density. Watercolor paper or canvas is mounted on a drum and as the drum rotates at high speed, tiny individual droplets of color spray on the surface at a rate of 4 - 5 million droplets per second.

The Roland and Epson printers use micro piezo print head technology, and depending on the model, can use dye-based inks, or water resistant pigment inks. Pigment inks, in combination with certain media, can last well over 100 years in display light before any noticeable fading (according to tests done by Wilhelm Research Institute at http://www.wilhelm-research.com). The name giclée comes from a French term meaning "to spray forcefully." Giclée prints allow artists to make limited edition prints that look like the original artwork, but can be printed in different sizes at a more affordable price.

Kathleen offers limited edition prints as iris or archival pigment prints in sizes from 5x6 inches to a maximum of 40x40 inches. Her limited edition iris prints were made on 100% Rag Somerset Velvet watercolor paper with Pinnacle Gold archival inks. These inks have been stability tested by Henry Wilhelm to last 65-75 years in display light on the Somerset Velvet paper. Skylark Images, Sebastopol, worked with her at every stage of creating these prints in order to closely match the original Polaroid transfers and SX-70 manipulations. Editions are limited to 100 (or 200 in a few cases) prints per image. Her archival pigment prints are in editions of 40, and were made with the Roland printer (for large prints) on Somerset Velvet Enhanced paper and Roland pigment inks. The 11x14 and smaller prints were printed by Kathleen on the Epson 2200 printer using Epson archival media and inks. For all of her images, she also offers archival pigment open editions of small prints 5 inches and under, available only from her studio.