A
Albumen print
A coating consisting of a combination of egg whites and salt applied to glass (for photographic negatives) or paper (for photographic prints) and then sensitised with a silver nitrate solution. Albumen prints were common from the 1850s to the 1890s and were preferred to salt prints for their clarity and tonal range.
Ambrotype
A photographic process consisting of a collodion positive on glass backed by opaque material and held in a hinged case. Ambrotypes largely replaced daguerreotypes in the late 1850s and were themselves replaced in the 1860s by cheaper tintypes and cartes-de-visite.
Autochrome
Autochrome refers to the colour “screen-plate” process developed by the Lumière brothers in 1903. It was the principal colour photography process until it was replaced by colour film in the mid-1930s.
B
Bromide or Bromoil print
A photographic print using gelatin silver paper which uses a bromide salt instead of the more typical chloride salt. The chemical difference provides a different tonal quality, a brownish hue to the blacks.
C
C-print / Chromogenic print
Developed in 1930, the c-print or chromogenic print is the most universal type of colour photograph, created using negatives or slides, an enlarger, photographic paper, and at least three emulsion layers of light-sensitive silver salts. Chromogenic colour prints are composed of cyan, magenta, and yellow layers, which together create the complete image.
Calotype
The first negative/positive photographic process developed by British inventor William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1830s and patented in 1841. Sensitised paper was exposed to light in a camera, creating a latent image. The image was then chemically developed and fixed as a negative from which multiple positive prints could be made.
Camera lucida
A drawing aid popular in the early 19th century, which projects the object to be drawn onto a piece of paper by means of a prism. It was patented in 1807 by William Hyde Wollaston and famously used by William Henry Fox Talbot, whose poor drawing skills partly motivated his early experiments in photography.
Camera obscura
A forerunner of the modern camera, the camera obscura consisted first of a room, then later of a portable box with a small opening on one side. Light reflected by objects in the natural world enters the box through a lens set into the opening and projects an image onto the opposite surface.
Carbon ink print
A black and white print created with a professional high-resolution inkjet printer, utilising four to six shades of carbon pigment-based monochromatic inks.
Carbon transfer
Refers to one of the oldest permanent photographic print processing techniques. It uses a sensitised emulsion of water, gelatin, sugar, and pigment (lampblack and sumi ink) on sheets of Mylar (the carbon “tissue”). A negative is then contact printed onto the tissue using ultraviolet light as the exposure light source. The UV light raises the melting point of the exposed gelatin. A wet emulsion will bond to the paper, and the combination of mylar, emulsion, and paper is then placed in hot water. The hot water melts some of the emulsion, and when the mylar is pulled away, the image is left on the paper.
Carte-de-visite
Small photographs mounted to cardstock patented in 1854. These “visiting” cards, most often featuring individual or celebrity portraits, were popularly traded and collected in albums.
Cibachrome print
First introduced in 1963, this colour print process typically uses high-gloss paper and forms an image by selectively bleaching dyes existing in the paper. Renowned as one of the most stable and long-lasting of all colour prints. Originally called Cibachrome, the product line was purchased by Ilford, which changed the name of the product.
Collodion process
A 19th-century photographic method invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851, known for creating detailed images by coating a glass plate with a light-sensitive collodion emulsion, exposing it while wet, and developing it within minutes in a portable darkroom.
Crystal archive print
A print created with a new generation of colour negative photographic paper designed for use in large, digitally controlled laser enlargers. The lasers expose the emulsion on the paper in microscopic increments. When completely exposed, the paper is then processed with traditional photographic chemicals. This photographic paper is expected to remain colour stable for more than 60 years.
Cyanotype
Cyanotype is an older printing method which uses a monochrome photographic process to produce a cyan-blue print.
D
Daguerreotype
One of the first practical photographic processes named for the French artist/inventor Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. A light-sensitive coating on a silver-plated copper sheet produced brilliant and sharp images, which have proven to be extremely permanent. Each one is unique.
Digital print
Digital photography refers to electronically captured images composed of digital values, or pixels. Iris prints, giclee prints, and digital archival prints are three examples of popular digital printing methods.
Dye destruction print
Dye destruction prints are characterised by their vibrant colour. These prints are created using three emulsion layers, each one specifically sensitised to a different primary colour and containing a dye relevant to that colour. During the process, different information is recorded from each layer, creating the final image in which three layers are perceived as one.
Dye transfer print
Dye transfer prints are created from three separate negatives by photographing the original negative through red, green, and blue filters. The result is a richly-coloured image on gelatin-coated paper.
E
Emulsion
A light-sensitive colloid used in film-based photography. Most commonly, in silver-gelatin photography, it consists of silver halide crystals dispersed in gelatin.
G
Gelatin silver print
A black-and-white photographic print created by projecting a negative image onto paper coated with light-sensitive silver halide suspended in a gelatin binder, which then undergoes chemical development to reveal the image. This popular, century-old process is known for producing crisp, high-contrast images with a wide range of neutral black and white tones.
Giclee print
Giclee (g-clay) prints, a French word for “a spraying of ink,” originally referred to prints made on Iris inkjet printers. Contemporary giclee prints are created on fine, sometimes handcrafted watercolour paper.
I
Ilford print
First introduced in 1963, this colour print process typically uses a high-gloss paper and forms an image by selectively bleaching dyes that exist in the paper. Renowned as one of the most stable and long-lasting of all colour prints. Originally called Cibachrome, the product line was purchased by Ilford, which changed the name of the product.
Inkjet print
An inkjet print can be created on an inexpensive home printer from a digital image file or on a 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 photographic prints.
Iris print
A fine art print that is produced on an Iris printer, an extremely high resolution inkjet printer that can print on a wide variety of materials, including watercolour papers as well as artist’s canvas. The Giclee (gee-clay) is the most common of the Iris prints.
O
Original photograph
Photographs are, by nature of the art form, two steps removed from the subject. The first step is the negative (or positive transparency), the second is the photograph. An original photograph is a photograph printed by the photographer from the original negative.
P
Palladium print
Similar to a platinum print using palladium salts rather than platinum. The process became popular after WWI when platinum became too costly.
Photogram
This process, created without the use of a camera, records photo-sensitive material by exposing it to light. Similar to an X-ray, the final image records silhouetted images on photographic paper.
Photogravure
A process for reproducing photographs invented in the 19th century, this method involves preparing a metal plate with an acid bath to etch the photographic image onto the metal surface. Ink is applied to the plate and then wiped off with a cloth. The plate is pressed into paper that has been lightly moistened, which picks up the pigment remaining in the etched grooves, creating a printed image.
Photolithography
Photolithography art is a printmaking process where a photographic image is transferred to a matrix, such as a stone or aluminum plate, which is then used to create prints by hand.
Photomontage
A single image formed from assembling many existing images such as photographs or prints.
Photorealism
An art style that reached its peak in the United States in the 1970s in which paintings—often large-format acrylics—imitate or even duplicate photographs. Also called Hyperrealism and Superrealism.
Pigment print
A colour print made using digital technologies with a pigment ink as the colour base instead of dye, and the first digital printmaking process to combine archival stability with a small droplet size. The most common digital printmaking technology uses Epson printers and inks. Independent of paper selection, archival stability is expected for over 70 years.
Platinum print
A contact print made by coating paper with a specially prepared platinum emulsion. The emulsion is prepared by the photographer immediately before printing, which makes for a time-consuming, expensive, and inherently variable process. High-quality platinum prints are difficult to make and require a high degree of technical competence. The result is an extremely stable print with rich tones and ranges of grey unattainable in silver prints.
Polaroid
Refers to the synthetic plastic sheet used to polarise light, typically associated with the instant camera and self-developing film.
Portfolio
A group of photographs published together, usually with some unifying concept such as artist, subject matter, composition, theme, or interpretation.
S
Salt print
The earliest form of photographic positive paper, salt prints were the most common print type until the invention of the albumen. Developed in 1840 by William Fox Talbot, they were created by soaking a sheet of paper in a salt solution and coating it with silver nitrate. This created a light-sensitive paper which typically produced sepia prints with a matte surface.
Selenium toning
A darkroom process for black-and-white prints that enhances archival permanence, increases the image’s maximum density, and produces a characteristic warm, reddish-brown or purplish-brown tone.
Sepia toning
Originally a chemical process to give photos a warm, antique look and greater archival stability, the sepia effect is now a digital filter that creates a sentimental, dreamy, or timeless aesthetic in modern images.
Silver print
Silver prints are created by the most common method for producing black and white prints in photography. These prints are generated using papers coated with gelatin that contain light-sensitive silver salts. By 1895, the Gelatin-silver print had replaced the Albumen print, because it did not yellow with age and was easier to produce.
W
Woodburytype
Refers to the photomechanical process in which a continuous tone is created in slight relief. In this process, a gelatin film is exposed under a photographic negative and hardened according to the amount of light. The film is then placed in hot water, removing all unexposed gelatin, dried, and pressed into a sheet of lead. As a result, an intaglio plate is created, filled with pigmented gelatin, and pressed onto paper to produce a final image.