Fujiflex

CMYK is an industry standard abbreviation for cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These are the colours used in standard four-colour printing (as in inkjet and Iris printers).

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…

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.

Matt, gloss, supergloss, satin and pearl are all finishes available on different paper types. Satin and pearl are different names for the same finish (somewhere between gloss and matt).

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.