Art Business News' guide to photographic processes

Art Business News, Oct, 2003 by Susan Seiling, Laura Meyers

Quadtone prints have a distinct look that is different--though just as beautiful--as black-and-white prints made in a traditional darkroom. Quadtones made on fine art papers often look a lot like platinum prints, except they have a sharper quality and a wider range of tones. If viewed closely or with a magnifying glass, you can sometimes see the grey dots that create the image. Quadtone prints have also been marketed as Piezography prints, black-and-white ink-jet prints and Iris prints.

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Color Ink-Jet Prints

These digital prints are made on ink-jet printers such as Iris, Epson, Roland or Colorspan printers. These printers take information from a digital image file and print it using inks on specialized papers. The image can be printed on a variety of surfaces, including matte and glossy papers, fine art papers and canvas. If you look closely at an ink-jet print or view it with a magnifying glass, you can sometimes see a dot pattern, ink-jet prints on fine art papers or canvas are also known as giclee prints.

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Type C Prints (Traditional)

These prints are made by projecting light through a color negative onto photographic paper. Traditional Type C prints are made in a traditional darkroom, using an enlarger and RA4 chemistry. They tend to have more muted colors than Cibachrome prints and Digital Type C prints. Before the advent of Digital Type C prints, this was one of the most popular color printing processes. Color prints made before the late 1990s that are not on a high-gloss paper are probably traditional Type C prints.

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Type C Prints (Digital)

Digital Type C Prints are color prints made in a digital enlarger such as the Lightjet or the Chromira. They are actual photographic prints that are exposed by LCDs or lasers then processed in traditional RA4 darkroom chemistry. Photographers are gravitating to this new type of printing for a number of reasons, including ease of control over how the image looks as a print, repeatability and archivalness.

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Platinum/Palladium Prints

Developed in 1873, platinum prints were highly popular until the 1910s when platinum prices rose significantly and manufacturers stopped making pre-coated platinum photographic paper. But they haven't become obsolete. To make today's platinum prints, a photographer mixes the emulsion from platinum, gelatin and other ingredients, then hand coats a piece of fine art paper with the mixture. The photographer then contact prints negatives onto the platinum paper, which means the negative is put into direct contact with the paper as it is exposed by the enlarger. Since platinum prints are made on uncoated fine art papers (such as watercolor paper), the image is embedded in the fibers resulting in a softer, more painterly look than other black-and-white processes provide. They also have a flatter surface. Sometimes a less expensive metal called palladium is added to or substituted for platinum, and these prints are usually called palladium prints.