Zincography was a planographic printing process that used zinc plates. Alois Senefelder first mentioned zinc's lithographic use as a substitute for Bavarian limestone in his 1801 English patent specifications. [1] In 1834, Federico Lacelli patented a zincographic printing process, producing large maps called géoramas. [2] In 1837–1842, Eugène-Florent Kaeppelin (1805–1865) perfected the process to create a large polychrome geologic map. [3]
Zinc plates could be obtained for less expense than fine lithographic limestone, and could be acquired at very large scale. Zinc was coated with a solution containing gallic acid and phosphoric acid that caused hygroscopic salts to form on the plate's surface. A printer would then cover the zinc plate with a coating of asphalt varnish, expose it under a drawing and develop it. The zinc affected by the lines of the drawing proof would be coated with hygroscopic salts. Bathing the plate in acetic acid resulted in the dissolution of the salts, the asphalt varnish protecting the remaining surfaces of the plate. Then the printer would coat the plate with a colored lacquer varnish called fuchsine, dried, dipped in benzene. This would dissolve the varnishes, leaving only the fuchsine varnish in the areas associated with the drawn lines, and hygroscopic salts elsewhere. The printer then wet the plate, the water localizing on the salts. As in lithography, ink applied to the plate was repelled by the hygroscopic areas, and attracted to the fuchsine areas. Sometimes zincographic printers created printing proofs on specially coated papers. [4]
Variants of the zincographic process included a form of early photographic engraving, photogravure: zinc was coated with a light-sensitive albumen/chromium salt mixture, exposed in contact with a glass negative, inked and the albumen removed by washing to create a single proof image. The printer would then transfer the proof design to a zinc plate under a press, and hand-etch the drawing onto the plate with a stylus. The plate was then rubbed with oil, which would not stick to the repellent coating, but adhere in the etched areas. The printer could then ink the plate, and it would remain in the grooves. As in chromolithography, colors were printed in successive passes of the press, the plates kept in register.
Zincography is frequently confused with modern zinc-plate lithographic printing. It directly influenced the development of photozincography, an early form of photogravure.
Lithography is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German author and actor Alois Senefelder and was initially used mostly for musical scores and maps. Lithography can be used to print text or images onto paper or other suitable material. A lithograph is something printed by lithography, but this term is only used for fine art prints and some other, mostly older, types of printed matter, not for those made by modern commercial lithography.
Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material. As a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today. In a number of modern variants such as microfabrication etching and photochemical milling, it is a crucial technique in modern technology, including circuit boards.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was a French inventor and one of the earliest pioneers of photography. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world's oldest surviving products of a photographic process. In the mid-1820s, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. Among Niépce's other inventions was the Pyréolophore, one of the world's first internal combustion engines, which he conceived, created, and developed with his older brother Claude Niépce.
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used historically to print in colour, both by printing with multiple plates in different colours, and by making monochrome prints that were then hand-coloured with watercolour.
A rotary printing press is a printing press in which the images to be printed are curved around a cylinder. Printing can be done on various substrates, including paper, cardboard, and plastic. Substrates can be sheet feed or unwound on a continuous roll through the press to be printed and further modified if required. Printing presses that use continuous rolls are sometimes referred to as "web presses".
Giclée describes digital prints intended as fine art and produced by inkjet printers. The term is a neologism, ultimately derived from the French word gicleur, coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on a modified Iris printer in a process invented in the late 1980s. It has since been used widely to mean any fine-art printing, usually archival, printed by inkjet. It is often used by artists, galleries, and print shops for their high quality printing, but is also used generically for art printing of any quality.
Digital printing is a method of printing from a digital-based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small-run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large-format and/or high-volume laser or inkjet printers.
Offset printing is a common printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier. Ink rollers transfer ink to the image areas of the image carrier, while a water roller applies a water-based film to the non-image areas.
Chromolithography is a method for making multi-colour prints. This type of colour printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and includes all types of lithography that are printed in colour. When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrome is frequently used. Lithography is a method of printing on flat surfaces using a flat printing plate instead of raised relief or recessed intaglio techniques.
Rotogravure is a type of intaglio printing process, which involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing, the image is engraved onto a cylinder because, like offset printing and flexography, it uses a rotary printing press.
Photogravure is a process for printing photographs, also sometimes used for reproductive intaglio printmaking. It is a photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained and then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio plate that can reproduce detailed continuous tones of a photograph.
Color printing or colour printing is the reproduction of an image or text in color.
Photoengraving is a process that uses a light-sensitive photoresist applied to the surface to be engraved to create a mask that protects some areas during a subsequent operation which etches, dissolves, or otherwise removes some or all of the material from the unshielded areas of a substrate. Normally applied to metal, it can also be used on glass, plastic and other materials.
Intaglio is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that make the image stand above the main surface.
Heliography is an early photographic process, based on the hardening of bitumen in sunlight. It was invented by Nicéphore Niépce around 1822. Niépce used the process to make the earliest known surviving photograph from nature, View from the Window at Le Gras, and the first realisation of photoresist as means to reproduce artworks through inventions of photolithography and photogravure.
Firmin Gillot was a French printmaker (engraver) and inventor.
Photozincography, sometimes referred to as heliozincography but essentially the same process, known commercially as zinco, is the photographic process developed by Sir Henry James FRS (1803–1877) in the mid-nineteenth century.
Collotype is a gelatin-based photographic printing process invented by Alphonse Poitevin in 1855 to print images in a wide variety of tones without the need for halftone screens. The majority of collotypes were produced between the 1870s and 1920s. It was the first form of photolithography.
Thermal paper is a special fine paper that is coated with a material formulated to change color locally when exposed to heat. It is used in thermal printers, particularly in inexpensive devices such as adding machines, cash registers, and credit card terminals and small, lightweight portable printers.
Bitumen of Judea is a sort of natural tar known from ancient times. It is a naturally occurring asphalt used since ancient times as a wood colorant, and in early photography.