Digital BW, The Print

> I don't know what's become of the process these days. Perhaps Ernst
> can comment.
>
> Bob Bollini

Bob,

It still exists in the printing industry as rotogravure, mainly for package
(plastic foils) printing and then in very large print runs. After it got
strong competition from offset in magazine printing it now faces competition
from
flexography in package printing. Judged on Chinese magazines I got from a
friend over the last ten years even in those countries offset is replacing
rotogravure for magazines. The old rotogravure with etched cylinders,
brickwork like screening was already replaced by computer controlled
engraving with a screening that relied partly on halftone and partly on the
old inkquantity per dot.

Photogravure with automatic sheet presses must have disappeared  as a
commercial activity. There was a company in northern Spain (Bilbao ?) that
still had some sheet presses running for books and reproductions of
photography. It must have been in the 80's that I have seen it mentioned.
Like collotype the quality is excellent but it depended heavily on the
skills of some old men. In Germany Hanfstangle closed its collotype
printshop in the seventies, there was a collotype printshop called Black Box
in Chicago, probably doesn't exist anymore, some lithoprinters did collotype
as well. Screenless offset was tried as a replacement but never made it on a
big scale.

I have some books and prints collected over the years, it is nice to see
that some old concepts return in inkjet printing. The ink quantity per dot
of conventional rotogravure is like the droplet size variation, Iris
printers rely even more on it with their frequency technic. The CcMmYK, the
CMYKOG or even more colour inksets make you think that chromolithography
wasn't that stupid with its 12 colours. Weaving, dithering was then done by
hand on the stone, the differences in dot technics between Germany and
France were recognised by people in the trade.

Of course some art printers that do intanglio for artists will be able to
print from copper plates that are made with photo technics. There was a
revival of Heliogravure (as we call it now) about 15 years ago in the
"collective" artist printshops here in the Netherlands. I tried to introduce
it in the printshop that I founded with some other people 20 years ago. They
rather stay with silkscreen, litho, woodcut etc. they find that complicated
enough. It is all very low scale production on small plates what is done in
the other shops.

Ernst