Glossary of Photographic and Printmaking Techniques and Terms
Archival: Since acids in paper, cotton, cardboard, wood and other materials will, over time, cause deterioration in the print, archival papers or materials which are acid-free are used for museum and exhibition quality work. To make it the acid pulp, lignin and sulfur have been removed during the processing. In addition, sometimes the pulp might be buffered with a calcium or magnesium base to prevent any environmental acidic penetration of material.
The term “archival” is also sometimes used with respect to certain color photographic techniques, as well as materials, to describe the color fastness of the process or the potential longevity.
Albumen Print: An Albumen “print” is made by floating a sheet of thin paper on a bath of egg white and salts, which has been thoroughly whisked and filtered. As the pores of the paper fill with albumen, a smooth surface is produced. Once dried, the paper is sensitized in a bath of a silver nitrate solution and dried again. This double-coated paper is then put into a frame in direct contact with the negative and then placed in the sun or light to print. This exposure might take minutes to several hours. Once exposed, it is developed, rinsed, dried and almost always toned with a gold toner. “The (gold) toning usually produce(s) a warm brown cast with yellow and cream highlights and smooth, bright surfaces, which (gives) albumen prints a distinctive appearance.” (Mora: page 47 and Baldwin:page 7).
Aquatint: is an etching process concerned with areas of tone rather than line. For this technique, the plate is covered with a ground or resin that is granular rather than solid (as in etching) and bitten, like etching, with acid. The acid bites between the granules. The design, wholly in tonal areas not line, is produced by protecting certain areas of the plate from the acid with an impervious varnish, by multiple bitings to produce different degrees of darkness, and by the use of several different resins with different grains. www.printshop.org/web/Learn/Glossary
Spitbite Aquatint: involves painting strong acid directly onto the aquatint ground of a prepared plate. Depending upon the time the acid is left on the plate, light to dark tones can be achieved. To control the acid application, saliva, ethylene glycol or Kodak Photoflo solution can by used. Traditionally, a clean brush was coated with saliva, dipped into nitric acid and brushed onto the ground, hence the term “spitbite.” An earlier but related technique, usually called lavis, involved painting the plate directly with acid, essentially drawing with acid rather than ink, and then washing it off when the desired effect had been achieved. Used usually – and only by certain artists- in conjunction with etching, there are few known works of pure lavis work. http://www.printshop.org/web/Learn/Glossary
Autochrome: An autochrome is the result of an additive color process and is a unique photograph—a positive transparency on a glass support—with colors composed of minute grains of potato starch dyed orange, green, and blue-violet.
Baryta or Fiber Based Papers: consist of fiber papers coated with baryta – a barium sulfate. A bartya layer is laid down between the emulsion layer and the base fiber of photography paper to prevent chemicals from infiltrating through breaking down the quality of the base paper. The bartya not only protect the base fibers, but also scatters the light back through the silver image layer and makes the image brighter.
This quality of paper is chosen to achieve varying effects as well as for exhibition, display or archiving purposes. They are easier to tone, hand color or retouch then resin-coated papers, but they require very special handling.
A cross section profile would show the fiber paper base layer, then a bartya layer, then the emulsion layer, before a final super-coating is laid on top to prevent physical damage to the emulsion.
Bromide Print: A print made using paper containing silver bromide that was sufficiently sensitive to light to be used for enlargements. Bromide papers came into general use around 1880 and became the most popular and widely used paper for black and white photography in the twentieth century.
Calotype or Talbotype: Invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1840 and patented in 1841, the calotype process was the earliest process invented to make “negatives”. From which multiple prints of an image could be made.
To make the “Calotype” negative, quality writing paper was brushed on one side with a solution of silver–nitrate and dried. Then by candlelight, the sheet was floated in potassium iodide solution producing a coating of light sensitive silver iodide. It was dried again but this time in the dark. Just before it was to be used, while still in very dim light, it was swabbed with a mixture of acetic and gallic acids making it completely light sensitive. Placed in the camera frame then while still damp, the print from the negative was exposed for 10 seconds to 10 minutes depending of differing atmospheric conditions. But this image remained latent (not visible) until it was subsequently dipped in another bath of silver nitrate and these acids. At this point the image became visible. To stop the process, it was bathed in potassium bromide, washed again and dried.
Because it was soaked so many times, the fibers of the paper tended to show through, reducing clarity in the details and causing a subtle mottling of tones. This process was used until the expanded use of the wet “collodian” negatives on glass The collodian negative was more popular because with the transparency of the glass as its base, the negative allowed for much crisper and detailed image to be printed.
Calotype negatives were revived again in the 1900’s to create the unique light diffusing effects desired by the Pictorialist photographers like Julia Margaret Cameron. (Baldwin: pages 15 and 16)
Chromogenic or Type “C” prints: (Negative to positive print): Also known as a “dye coupler”, this process was developed in the 1930’s. Nevertheless, it represents the process by which the majority of color prints are still made today. The chemicals that form the colored image are included in the emulsion of the paper when manufactured. The developing solution causes the silver compound to pair with the dyes embedded in the emulsion before the silver is bleached out. Only the dyed or colored image is left on the print where silver had been. In total there are 6 steps in processing of a chromogenic print: pre-wet, developer, stop bath, bleach or fix, wash and then dry.
Color prints from negatives as compared to those made from transparencies (positives like slides) have more exposure latitude (or tolerance for being over or under exposed) and require little, if any, filtration to alter the color when shooting the image. Instead it is easier to filter the image while printing it. The original Kodak formula (RA-4) for the emulsion became the industry standard for all color papers. So photographers can even mix their own emulsion and coat several kinds of sheet materials. (Horenstein: page 169).
Digital “C-Print”: A chromogenic print made by exposing Type-C photographic paper (such as Fuji Crystal Archive) with a digital enlarger instead of projected light of a traditional enlarger. The digital C-print is then processed in a color processer, or a wet darkroom process, just as a traditional C-print would be. (see “Light Jet print” definition) (Verve)
Cibachrome (see Ilfachrome) Print
Collodion process: Introduced by Frederick Scott Archer in 1848, this process created negatives on glass plates rather than on paper as was previously used for the calotype negative. It soon replaced both the daguerreotype and calotype/salt print methods for making photographs. Because glass negatives are more transparent than paper negatives, images printed in the wet collodian process were extremely sharp and grain-free.
First, guncotton (an explosive) is dissolved in a mixture of alcohol and ether creating a thick sticky substance called collodion. To create the negatives, carefully cleaned sheets of glass ‘edged’ with a rubber solution, are coated with collodian and then made light sensitive when placed in a bath of acidified silver nitrate. While still in the dark, the wet plate was placed in a holder and rushed to the camera for the exposure – only allowing perhaps 5-10 seconds in bright sun – before the collodion would fully dry. Once exposed, it had to be developed immediately. Soon as details became visible, it was removed, washed, and fixed or stopped in a bath of potassium cyanide (a poison), before it was dried. With an additional coating of varnish, it was ready to be used to make prints.
This complicated process required the photographer to bring all the chemicals and clean glass plates into the field, and have a dark tent or wagon in which to do it. A dry collodian process was available by mid 1850’s but because the results using it were inconsistent wet collodian retained popularity until replaced by gelatin silver print. (Baldwin: pages 27 and 28. And see www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWDWnDop5yk.)
Collotype: The collotype process is a screenless photomechanical process that allows high-quality. prints from continuous-tone photographic negatives. The process uses heat and cold water– treated dichromate-sensitized gelatin—which tends to reticulate—to create a random surface.
Color Coupler Print: The name refers to colored dyes that get coupled together with light-sensitive silver compounds to make color prints. (See Chromogenic Print)
Contact print: A contact print results when a negative is placed in direct contact with the sensitized paper and exposed to light. The resulting image is the same size as the negative without any loss or softening of detail. (Mora: page 75). They are high in contrast, and usually glossy and helpful when working with negatives since the negative is reversed in density, is complementary in color, and has the orange cast of the film. The contact print gives a preview of how the printed out image will look. (Horenstein: page 153)
Cyanotype: Cyanotype photography is a camera-less technique that involves laying an object on paper coated with a solution of iron salts before exposing it to UV light and washing with water to create stunning white and Prussian blue images.
Drypoint: prints are created by scratching a drawing into a metal plate with a needle or other sharp tool. This technique allows the greatest freedom of line, from the most delicate hairline to the heaviest gash. In drypoint the burr is not scraped away from the surface but stays on the surface of the plate to print a velvety cloud of ink until it is worn away by repeated printings. Drypoint plates (particularly the burr on them) wear more quickly than etched or engraved plates and therefore allow for fewer satisfactory impressions and show far greater differences from first impression to last.(http://www.printshop.org/web/Learn/Glossary)
Dye Transfer Print: Starting with an image, the colors are separated into three different black and white negatives: one made with a red filter, one with green and one with a blue filter. Each negative is then printed in the desired format onto a “matrix”. Matrix is composed of a gelatin coating over an estar base and was contained in a mold provided by the manufacturer. The tanner in the matrix substance causes the gelatin to harden so that when the negatives are developed, a relief “image” of gelatin remains on the sheet. Areas that received the most exposure are denser and harden more than those in the lightest areas. A subsequent rinse in warm water releases loose parts of the gelatin.
Once each of the three relief matrices are made with each of the filtered negatives, they are then soaked respectively in cyan or magenta or yellow dyes. (The chromatic compliments of the original filter colors: cyan is the chromatic compliment of red, magenta is the chromatic compliment of green, and yellow is the chromatic compliment of blue.)
After the gelatin relief absorbs the dye, the three matrices are aligned successively onto gelatin–coated paper, to combine and produce a full color image.
The finest color balances are obtained when this work is done by carefully removing each matrix from the transfer print. Should the artist want to intensify one color over another, it can be done during the development process: allowing ore or less of the color that is desired.
Unlike any other print, these color prints have a richness and depth that has been considered unattainable by any other color process. Because the separation negatives are stable, they make possible equally beautiful quality prints every time they are used. Kodak was the sole manufacturer until 1993 when they discontinued production. The process was very expensive and required skilled meticulous procedure but is still considered the finest for advertising, or fine art photographs. (Mora, page 87) http://www.jagger.com/dyetrans.html)
Engraving: a process in which a plate is marked or incised with a tool called a burin. A burn works on a copper plate like a plow on a field. As it is moved across the plate, copper shavings, called burr, are forced to either side of the lines being created and these are usually cleaned from the plate before inking. An engraved line may be deep or fine, has a sharp and clean appearance and tapers to an end. The process is slow and painstaking and generally produces formal-looking results. (http://www.printshop.org/web/Learn/Glossary)
Etching: has been a favorite technique for artists for centuries, largely because the method of inscribing the image is so similar to drawing with a pencil or pen. An etching begins with a metal plate (originally iron but now usually copper) that has been coated with a waxy substance called a “ground.” The artist creates the composition by drawing through the ground with a stylus to expose the metal. The plate is then immersed in an acid bath that “bites” or chemically dissolves the metal in the exposed lines. For printing the ground is removed, the plate is inked and then wiped clean. It is then covered with a sheet of dampened paper and run through a press. The ink is forced into the paper, resulting in the raised character of the lines on the printed impression. Etched lines usually have blunt rather than tapering ends. (http://www.printshop.org/web/Learn/Glossary)
Gelatin Silver Print: Generally the prints range from neutral blacks to white highlights unless they have been tined with special “toning” (see Toned) or hand colored with, watercolors, oils, crayons or pastels, and other paints or dyes.
Gelatin silver prints are made on sheet materials coated with silver halides (salts) suspended in a layer of emulsion. When light shone through a negative strikes the paper, it activates the silver particles. The exposed paper is placed in a chemical developing solution that allows the transformed silver particles to be seen by the human eye as black, white, and all the gray tones in between. The crystalline structure of the silver salts and the sensitivity of the gelatin silver emulsion makes fine enlargements possible without loss of detail, not possible by previous developing processes.
Because of the great variety of papers offered by manufacturers in the subsequent 125 years, the texture, tonality and amount of surface gloss of prints can vary quite widely based on the photographers choices, and the type of applications onto which the negative is printed. In addition the chemicals to make the gelatin silver are commercially available so that through experimentation, photographers are able to coat many other types of sheet materials to create their own “photographs”.
William Henry Fox Talbot had been the first to use the gelatin binder with silver salts for his salt paper prints. By 1871, Richard Leach Maddox prepared the first gelatin –silver bromide emulsion. So that by 1873, Peter Mawdsley was able to bind this emulsion to papers so they could be used for developing images in a chemical developer. By 1880 the photographic paper was commonly available.
Then in 1889, Kodak coated celluloid nitrate films to make pliable negatives: replacing the glass plates and allowing the rapid development of smaller box cameras. With subsequent improvements in light sensitivity, by 1895, both gelatin silver negatives and print papers were introduced commercially and had almost completely replaced “albumen” prints. Gelatin silver printing was the dominant photographic process from its introduction in the 1880s until the 1960s when it was partially eclipsed by consumer color photography.
It has provided the primary form of visual documentation in the 20th century. (Mora: page 100 and101 and Baldwin: pages 48 and 49)
Gelatin Silver Print On Vellum: is a term used for one unique type of gelatin silver print. For it, a unique paper that Kodak had manufactured for many years called “Polyfiber A” was used instead of traditional fiber papers. The “A” designates an extremely light-weight and “vellum”-like paper that when toned, yields a higher degree of warmth in the highlight areas than other choices of paper and toning processes do. (Verve Gallery: Glossary)
NOTE: “Vellum” is a translucent synthetic material, made of plasticized cotton. Most often used for technical engineering and architectural drawings, it is more stable and less resistant to stretching than papers made of cotton or linen.
Giclee (g-clay) prints: a French word for “a spraying of ink”, originally referred to prints made on Iris inkjet printers. Due to a proliferation of terms, it is now used for prints made on fine, sometimes handcrafted, watercolor paper.
Hue: “is what we call any color that can be pulled out of the light spectrum. Think of a rainbow, or different colors one gets when using a prism – which makes visible the different colored wavelengths of light. Hues are chromatic colors Confusion creeps into the use of this term when “hues” is used to describe the “shades” or “tints” of pigmented colors “. www.arthistory.about.com/cs/glossaries/g/h_hue.htm (Feb14, 2014)
Ilfochrome/Cibachrome: A color print process that provides a way tot make prints from color transparencies, and digital files. It can be made on either high-gloss or pearl (luster) finish and which is characterized by having extremely sharp details, rich color saturation, and stability. There are the 13 layers of Azo Dyes containing silver salts that translate into greater luminosity and color depth even in shaded areas than other processes can create.
Made from a color positive (transparency or slide), the process activates the developer solution to selectively bleach out the silver leaving only the colored dyes. Whereas a black-and-white print requires paper with one layer of emulsion, in a silver dye-bleach print (or dye destruction print), the paper contains three emulsion layers, each sensitized to one of the three primary colors of light—red, blue, or green.
Originally called Cibachrome, the process was purchased by Ilford, which changed the name of the product. They can be printed either onto a resin coated (RC) paper or onto a polyester base with either a glossy or pearl (luster) finish. The time needed to expose the print is relatively slow but the option of using a 3 steps process for the development (developer, bleach and fixer baths) rather than the 5 steps, can shorten the total time it takes to make a print. (Horenstein pages 193- 197 and Art Institute of Chicago: silver dye bleach print)
Inkjet print: An inkjet print can be created on an inexpensive home printer from a digital image file or on high quality commercial printer at high resolution. Ink is applied on paper or other material by spraying tiny droplets of ink from nozzles in the printer head. Iris and Giclee prints are examples of high quality inkjet applications. The newest inks and pigments formulated for this process have archival qualities similar to gelatin silver prints.
Japanned: Varnished metal, wood or other surfaces with “Japan” or a lacquer or any other hard black glossy coat. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/japanned)
Laser Prints: A laser printer is a printer that uses a focused beam or light to transfer images onto paper. The laser does not actually burn the images onto the paper. Instead, as paper passes through the printer, the laser beam fires at the surface of a cylindrical drum called a photoreceptor. This drum has an electrical charge (typically positive), which reverses in areas where the laser beam hits it. By reversing the charge in those areas of the drum, the laser beam print patterns (such as text and pictures) onto the photoreceptor.
Once the image has been created on the drum, it is coated with toner from a toner cartridge. The toner is black in most simple printers, but may also have additional cartridges of cyan, magenta, and yellow in color laser printers. When the paper passes through the printer, the drum is given a strong negative charge, which allows the toner to transfer from the drum and stick to the paper. The result is a clean copy of the image on the paper. (http://www.techterms.com/definition/laserprinter)
Latent image: a reproduction of the image that remains invisible on an exposed plate or paper until it is made visible by the chemical or digital development.
Luminage Print: A print produced using a CSI LightJet 5900 Printer. This printer uses high resolution RGB (red, green and blue) lasers to expose the paper and offers the very highest resolution and variety of colors.
Numbering: The numbering of individual impressions of prints can be found as early as the late nineteenth century. However, it did not become standard practice until the mid 1960’s. Today, all limited edition prints should be numbered, with the first number being the impression number and the second number representing the whole edition, thus 12/50, impression number 12 from an edition of 50. The numbering sequence does not necessarily reflect the order of printing; prints are not numbered as they come off the press but some time later, after the ink has dried. And one must keep in mind that the edition number does not include proofs (see proofs), but only the total in the numbered edition. http://www.printshop.org/web/Learn/Glossary/
Photo-etching: Photo etching is a metal engraving process which utilizes a combination of ultra-violet light and corrosive chemicals to etch a desired shape into metal.
Photogram: A photogram is made on photographic paper without a lens or camera. Either the papers can be directly manipulated or printed in unique ways, or by placing objects directly on top of the 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. (Meter: Glossary)
Photogravure: Also known as heliogravure. Considered the finest photomechanical means for reproducing a photograph in large editions. Devised by Karel Klic from 1879 on, photogravure depends on a gelatin to harden on to the plate in proportion to its exposure to light. A positive contact print is made from the original negative. And while still wet the print is pressed into a gelatin coated tissue. Then this tissue is pressed firmly, gelatin side down, onto a resin coated copper plate and exposed. Next when they are placed in warm water, the tissue is peeled or dissolves away from the plate, leaving various depths of gelatin on the plate depending on how long the plate was exposed. Then the plate is put into an acid bath, where the plate is etched. Where the gelatin had quickly dissolved the plate will be very lightly etched or left smooth; these areas will be lightly toned on the print. Where the gelatin is very thick, it will take much longer for it to dissolve and therefore those areas will be more deeply etched. These deepest areas will hold more ink and be blackest on the print. The plate is inked and placed in a printing press so many copies can be made. In high quality work the whites seem very white and the blacks seem like charcoal.
Alfred Stieglitz popularized this method and encouraged his group from Camera Works, to sign directly onto the plate. This way he asserted that every print could be considered an original. (Baldwin Getty. Pages 67 and 68.)
Pigment Print: A color print made using digital technologies with pigment ink as the color base instead of dye. This digital print-making process allows for a far richer color range because of the small droplet size. Independent of paper selection, archival stability from this technology is expected for over 70 years. The most common digital print making technology using pigments are Epson printers and inks.
Color printing inks are made primarily with linseed oil, soybean oil, or a heavy petroleum distillate as the solvent (called the vehicle) combined with organic pigments. The pigments are made up of salts of multiring nitrogen-containing compounds (dyes), such as yellow lake, peacock blue, phthalocyanine green, and diarylide orange. Inorganic pigments also are used in printing inks to a lesser extent. Some examples are chrome green (Cr2O3), Prussian blue (Fe4[Fe(CN)6]3), cadmium yellow (CdS), and molybdate orange (a mix of lead chromate, molybdate, and sulfate).
Black ink is made using carbon black. And white pigments, such as titanium dioxide, are used either by themselves or to adjust characteristics of color inks. Inks also contain additives such as waxes, lubricants, surfactants, and drying agents to aid printing and to impart any desired special characteristics (Steve Ritter: What’s that Stuff? November 16, 1998. www.pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/7646scit2.html
Platinum Print (Platinotype): Similar to silver gelatin prints, platinum prints require iron and platinum instead of silver in the sensitized salts. Platinum prints are valued aesthetically for the greater range of subtle tonal variations (typically silvery grays) and unrivalled archival properties compared to gelatin silver prints. The price of platinum and the complexity of the process make them expensive to produce. The result, however, is an extremely stable print with rich tones and ranges of gray unobtainable in silver gelatin prints. (Meter Gallery: Glossary and Baldwin: pages 73 and 74)
In a platinum print, the paper is first coated by hand with a solution of light-sensitive platinum salts and left to dry in a process called sensitizing. The negative is then placed in direct contact with the sensitized paper and exposed via either sun or artificial ultraviolet light. Following exposure, the print is put in the developer and the clearing bath before the final wash. After the image is dried, the printer can repeat the process of coating the paper and exposing the negative multiple times if necessary. De-acidification of the paper is the final step. From this process a single-layer print with the image embedded in the paper fibers. If a multilayered printing process is used, a system of precise registration punches are made to ensure the paper and negatives remain perfectly aligned through the multi-step process. By using different negatives of varying contrasts, an artist is able to achieve great depths of tone and contrast in his final prints. (Art Institute of Chicago: Platinum Print)
Invented by William Willis in 1873 to 1878, they were popular until the 1920’s when platinum became too expensive when they were replaced by palladium. Today, photographers who desire the unique qualities of platinum printing usually create their own printing paper by mixing the light-sensitive chemicals and coating paper by hand.
Resin Coated Papers (RC): The base fiber layer of resin-coated paper is sealed by two polyethylene layers: one above it and one below it, making the fiber totally impenetrable to liquids. The protection these layers offer the fiber base, not only reduces the time needed for processing the paper in comparison to fiber based papers, but also prevents them from curling as easily when drying. A cross section profile would show a resin layer, then the fiber, then another resin layer before the emulsion layer with the super coating layer on top.
Salt Print: Invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1840, the salt print process was the first photographic process that made it possible to obtain a “positive” print of an image. They were made from either a “calotype” paper negative or “collodian” negative on glass. The prints are a reddish brown color with white highlights. “The granular surface makes them appear more tonal than linear” ( Mora page 61). They have no surface gloss unless they have been varnished with a thin coating of “albumen” (see definition). Sometimes they are toned in gold chloride to give them richer purplish brown tone, and permanence.
A salt print is made by soaking a sheet of paper in a solution of sodium-chloride and dried before an additional coating of silver nitrate was added to one side. After drying the sheet again, the treated paper is placed, sensitive side up directly beneath a negative and under a sheet of glass. This sandwich is then exposed glass side up in sunlight. As the image emerges, and reaches the desired intensity, it is immediately put in a stop-bath, washed and dried.
Talbot’s production in 1844-1846, of “The Pencil of Nature”, an album of original salt prints offered the first introduction to the process. It had been Talbot’s dream to create a process by which life like drawing of things from nature could be made using the photographic process instead of other mediums: he called it “photogenic drawing”. By 1851, Louis–Desire Blanquart-Evard created a faster way to make salt prints. With his process, a negative could be made, but did not need to be printed out immediately. Consequently, multiple prints could be made with one negative. The Salt Print process, as invented by these two men, provided the basis for what we still know as the photographic process: in which multiple positive prints can be made from a negative. They were replaced by “albumen prints” by 1860. (Baldwin Getty page 74 and 75.)
Silver Dye Bleach Print (See Ilfachrome)
Sintra: Sintra is a lightweight yet rigid board of moderately expanded closed-cell polyvinyl chloride (PVC) extruded in a homogenous sheet with a low gloss matte finish. http://www.sintrapvc.com/
Tintype: It is essentially a collodian negative made on a thin sheet of iron (commonly called “tin” because of it was so inexpensive). As a variant of the wet “collodian” process used for the daguerreotype, the plate is only partially processed rather than left to fully develop. The image remains whiter, having not turned to black as it would if it were fully developed. When the white collodian image is placed against a thin lacquered or “japanned” black-coated plate, it appears to be a positive. In fact it is the reverse of the original image because it is a “negative”. The tintype became popular in the 1850s and was popular to the end of the century because it was a less expensive way to produce a photograph than other processes. Starting in 1980s-present, there has been a revival of interest in making tintypes. They have limited tonal range and appear flat and soft. Also called Ferrotypes or Melainotypes. (Baldwin: pages 80,81 and See Scully and Osterman)
Toning: of either wet or dry prints and both black and white and color prints is done wet, unless it is in the computer/camera. The dried print is wet with water and then bathed or brushed with one or more of the following tones:
Toning, Selenium: This is a chemical process used to both harden the surface of a gelatin silver print to make it more permanent, and to intensify the tonalities or shades in a print without reducing the contrast. Selenium gives a red-brown tone and if stronger a purple brown tone. Fiber based papers are better than standard coated photography papers at taking on the tones.
Toning, Metal: (Iron, Copper, Gold and Platinum) Causes the metallic silver in the paper to be replaced. When iron is used, the print turns bluer; with copper, it turns redder. They are not as stable as the metallic silver so they will not last as long. When gold is used, it turn the print into warmer purplish brown tones while Platinum brings out the silvery gray tones. Both Gold and Platinum toning increase the stability of the print and it can resist fading much longer.
Toning, Sepia: This is a chemical process that is used to create a warmer hue to a gelatin silver print. Done in three stages, first the paper is soaked in Potassium Fericyanide bleach, washed, and then toned to convert the silver halides to silver sulfides. If the bleaching stage is reduced, a multi- toned image with sepia highlights and wider range of gray to black tones result: called “split-toning”.
Toning, Dye; In the process of dye toning, the metallic silver is replaced with dye.
Toning, Digital: Digital software can be used either in the camera, or in the post-processing to get a variety of effects.
Woodburytype: A woodbury type is a photomechanical process formed by a layer of colored gelatin pressed on a sheet of paper in a mold. The mold is photographically made from a negative and varies in its thickness according to the light and dark areas of the negative.
Xeroradiography: A dry photographic or photocopying process in which a negative image formed by a resinous powder on an electrically charged plate is electrically transferred to and thermally fixed as positive on a paper or other copying surface. The latent image is made visible with a powder toner similar to that used in a copying machine. The powder image is transferred and heat-fused to a sheet of paper. The images exhibit “edge contrast” because of the shape of the electric fields that pull toner onto the plate. http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/xeroradiography
Bibliography
Baldwin, Gordon: Looking at Photographs: A guide to technical terms: The J. Paul Getty Museum in association with British Museum Press, Los Angeles, CA 1991.
Horenstein, Henry and Russell Hart; Color Photography; A Working Manual: Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1995.
Mora,Gilles, Photo-speak; A Guide to the Ideas, Movements, and Techniques of Photography, 1839 to the Present, Abbieville Press, New York 1998.
Scully,Mark and France Scully Ostermann: How is a Tintype Made? (George Eastman House Workshops) http://www.collodion.org/index.html Scully and Ostermann Studio, Rochester, New York.
Suzuki, Sarah; “What is a Print?” Selections form the Museum of Modern Art; New York, New York 2011.
Online Sources
Ansel Adams Gallery: Search: Glossary of Photographic Terms”
www.anseladams.com/ansel-adams-photography/original-photographs-by-ansel-adams/glossary-of-photographic-terms Yosemite National Park, CA, 2014
George Eastman House; “Photographic Processes and Terms Glossary”: at www.notesonphotographs.org
Hougen, Erik et al: Lower East Side Printshop Inc. “ Glossary of Printmaking Terms and Techniques” http://www.printshop.org/web/Learn/Glossary/ New York New York, 2014.
Ansel Adams Gallery: Search: Glossary of Photographic Terms”
www.anseladams.com/ansel-adams-photography/original-photographs-by-ansel-adams/glossary-of-photographic-terms Yosemite National Park, CA, 2014
Search for “hue”: www.arthistory.about.com/cs/glossaries/g/h_hue.htm (Feb14, 2014)
Search For “Japanned”: in Dictionary.com., January 2014. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/japanned)
Search for “xeroradiagraphy”, February 2014.
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/xeroradiography
From Meter Gallery and Industries, New York New York 2014: https://www.metergallery.com Under “About Artwork: “Glossary”:
Search for what is “sintra board”, February 2014.
http://www.sintrapvc.com/
Verve Gallery of Photography: “Glossary of Terms” http://www.vervegallery.com/?p=glossary , Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2002-2014.