Surface finishes

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…

Gicler, a French verb meaning ‘to spurt’, is another industry term for inkjet printing. See inkjet.

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…

Paper or material-based paper type used in printing black and white images from negatives (C-type). Available in all surface finishes, this thicker paper has a high-quality texture, gives an excellent finish, and adds ‘depth’ to the image through the faint weave of the paper/fibre.

The autochrome is an early color photography process, patented the 17th December 1903 by Auguste and Louis Lumière. Before the commercialization, they diffused the autochrome technique to some favored photographers, like Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. The commercialization started in 1907 and the technique was used between 1907 and about 1932. A lot of photos of the First World…

A photogram is a photograph made without a lens or camera: objects are placed directly on top of a sheet of photographic paper which is then exposed to light. Where the objects obstruct the light, the paper remains unexposed (light in tone), while the rest darkens through exposure.