An exploration of low relief structure printing through the development of a novel full colour continuous tone plastographic printing method

TL;DRAbstract

A traditional halftone print is created by translating the image into a series of dots of various sizes that convey the illusion of tone when printed. The carbon process and the Woodburytype process are a special kind of continuous tone image known as photoplastography. Like other continuous tone images they contain no screen or dot structure when printed, but unlike them, they are generated as a physical image relief rendered by light and a photosensitive gelatine. The relief generates the tones by varying the thickness of the pigmented gelatine thus providing a superior tonal range to halftoned images. Over the century, print technology evolved to become faster and cheaper, resulting in these beautiful, time consuming and expensive processes to fall out of use. Whilst it was possible to develop the carbon process as a full polychromatic print and is still in use today. The Woodburytype was unable to make this transition and has remained monochromatic and this was one of the reasons f

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