Photogram

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…

Silver salts Silver salts are light sensitive chemical compounds. When exposed to light – either in a camera (in the case of film and negatives) or in the dark room (photographic papers) – the silver salts react by darkening in proportion to the amount of light reflected from the subject. Silver bromide Print Silver bromides…

An Interneg produced by digital means, rather than traditional photographic methods. Digital internegs are made by scanning an original negative or its positive image, before laser-writing the digital negative.

Also known as heliogravure, photogravure is arguably the finest photomechanical means of reproducing a photograph in large editions. Copper plates are acid-etched directly from an original silver print; the etched areas then hold differing amounts of ink in order to correspond to the tones of the original print. If prints remain untrimmed, the impression of…

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…

A stencil is made up for each colour of the image and put over a fine fabric mesh that is stretched over a metal frame. The coloured ink is spread over the mesh and stencil and the ink falls through the stencil to the underlying material (usually an art paper) to produce the image. The…