Digital colour coupler Colour coupler prints, or chromogene prints, are very similar to standard C-type prints, but the silver salts ‘couple’ with coloured dyes, rather than being replaced by them. The end result is very similar to standard C-type prints. Colour coupler prints have the benefit of using the same extremely light-sensitive silver salts as found in silver gelatin prints, but they form high-resolution colour images rather than black and white ones.
A sheet of transparent film coated with silver salts which react when exposed to light (usually in a camera). In black and white negatives, one layer of salts reacts to white light (the full spectrum of light). The result is a reversal of normal vision: the shadows are light, the highlights dark. In colour negatives…
Dye, unlike pigment, dissolves completely in solution (pigment-based inks leave tiny particles floating in the solution). This means that dye-based inks are entirely absorbed into the paper that they are printed on – the image is in fact a highly controlled stain. The resulting images can thus appear very slick and even, with a vast…
P.F.T.s, or Print Film Transparencies, are positive colour reproductions from original negatives, produced as transparencies.
Term used in multiples publishing when only a limited number of any print, book, sculpture or other artwork is produced. Editions can be limited to almost any number depending on the nature of the work.
C-type printing involves printing colour paper enlargements from small, colour negatives. This is the most common type of colour printing found in the high street and mini-labs.
A positive is, obviously, the opposite of a negative – that is, it is an image which is not reversed. Positive images are made through a double negative: silver salts react to light producing a negative which, when projected onto photographic paper (more silver salts), produces a positive.