Glossary

Using acid-free mount boards prevents acid burns (yellowish-brown burn lines) from appearing on artworks over time.

Toning, or toned black and white: toning images allows an artist/printer to alter the colours of a photographic print (by replacing the silver in the silver salts with another metal). Toning can be used as an aesthetic decision by the artist, or it can also be used to improve the archival properties of a print….

Regarded as one of the best digital printers. It uses three lasers (Red, Green & Blue) to print digitised images onto traditional photographic paper. This allows consistent reproduction of large run editions with the same quality as traditional print techniques. This process typically uses C-type paper. Lambda on crystal archive: see Lambda and Fuji colour…

Although it may seem too obvious to mention, may people are unaware of what exactly constitutes a print. Put simply, a print is a method of image-making that allows the work of art to be created more than once. The size of the edition (i.e.the number of prints produced of the one work), the significance…

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…

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…

A particular type of reversal (R-type) colour paper and printing process which gives strong colours (often with striking reds) and creates a long-lasting print. Printing in this way from a positive image results in exactly the same colour saturation as the original, and greater contrast.

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…

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…