Digital BW, The Print

Easter Bonnet and you can keep your chump change!
----- Original Message -----
From: "p5198" <rbollini@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2002 2:24 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] RE: Photogravure and Inkjet


> A mechanized subspecies used to appear regularly as the rotogravure
> section of the Sunday papers in the thirties and forties. Usually
> printed in sepia/browntone, it was a fixture of the society pages:
>
> "and you'll find that you're
> in the rotogravure..."
>
> (A buck if you can name the song. Canadian buck).
>
> Photogravure was a feature of the most elaborate series on photography
> ever published in the US, the ten-volume *Complete Photographer*
> edited by Willard Morgan, 1940-43. Each volume contained several
> photogravure sections, each with up to a dozen illustrations, many by
> the great B&W photographers of the day (and the past as well). It
> was/is truly a wonderful way to reproduce tones, but Lenswork's
> sneering de haut en bas tone with respect to ink jet prints, and the
> implication that only a few little old clockmakers can print
> photogravure is pretentious and silly. I've seen many ink-jet prints
> from this very company of printers that equalled Photogravure. PG was
> dethroned by duotone printing after the war, as tastes shifted to more
> open midtone- and high value-reproduction rather than the rich but
> dark low values of photogravure.
>
> Incidentially, if you think you have some of the older photogravure
> repros in your collections, a loupe will discover the tiny square
> boxes that contain and transfer the ink and diagnose the process.
>
> I don't know what's become of the process these days. Perhaps Ernst
> can comment.
>
> Bob Bollini
>
> >
> > I'd like to understand just how the photogravure varies the tones.
> I'm
> not
> > finding any really good information on that, but a close-up of the
> plate
> > would probably help quite a bit...
> >
> > Here's one more explanation, a bit more detailed, but over my head:
> >
> > http://haleysteele.com/hs_root/learning/technical/index.html
> >
> > I'll have to read it a couple of times very slowly to get any
> understanding
> > of it.  Very bizarre picture as an example of PG by the way.
>
> Thanks for the link. Very interesting although his explainations and
> constant referrences to other printing methods I don't understand make
> it a
> bit difficult. I do get from it that the ink density in the print is
> controled by the depth of the acid etching.
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>
>
>
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> 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

<div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed">

p5198 wrote:

 >"and you'll find that you're
 >in the rotogravure..."
 >
 >
 >
"I'll be all in clover
and when they look you over
I'll be the proudest fella
in the Easter Parade...."

As a kid of 5, 6, or 7 imagine trying to say "rotogravure" when singing
in Grade school.. aghh!


Keith



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----- Original Message -----

From: "Paulo Baptista" <paulo.baptista@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2002 12:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] RE: Photogravure and Inkjet


> Hi all,
>
> an useful source of info on photogravure and other antique printing
> processes can be found on the book "The Keepers of Light", by William
> Crawford (Morgan & Morgan, 1979). Also Aperture, Inc. (www.aperture.org)
> publishes several series of photogravure prints by photographers such as
> Paul Strand, Alfred Stiegliz and others, produced by the Photogravure
> Workshop, located in Hadley, MA, and supervised by master printer Richard
> Benson.
> As far as I know, the photogravure process uses variable depth etching on
a
> copper plate (instead of a halftone screen), through a high pressure
> printing press to produce a grayscale print with oil inks on fine art
papers.
>
> Regards,
> Paulo Baptista
> www.paulbaptista.cjb.net

There are several versions to create the copper printing plate, one of them
uses an aquatint like screening
by burning in resin particles on the plate and cover that plate then with a
photo sensitive coating (Kodak, Autotype, Kiwo). Exposure through continuous
tone film. The layer thickness differences of the coating after development
(rinsing with water) influences the speed the etching fluid gets to the
copper and starts biting away the copper. Then all is cleaned afterwards and
an irregular pattern of different sized naps (cells) is visible. The best
way would be that the depth is varying but the other proportions of a nap
will also get bigger as well. Nifty systems where the plate is attached to
the top of an etch chamber, and etch sprayed on it from below can control
that behaviour and so can different etches.

More industrial methods of conventional photogravure used the same
continuous tone film and sensitive coating but introduced an extra graphic
film in the exposure (or exposures) with a brickwork like screen raster
(several varieties exist) instead of the resin dust burned in. A Tjech named
Klietsch invented most of the old rotogravure . Kurtz and Levy in the US and
Swan the English inventor (light bulbs too)  and founder of the Autotype
company are the other names usually mentioned in photogravure. Didn't check
the names so all IIRIC.

I have mentioned the Hell computer controlled engraving of copper cylinders
already. At first an analogue system with direct scanning of continuous tone
film and simultaneous engraving of the cylinder with a steel bit. This
became more digital through the years. The screen is half-autotypic as the
surface size of the naps is also varying, tone control is easier then. Later
on other methods of engraving with laser etc. beams were introduced.

An interesting technic appeared in the late seventies. Crosfield Electronics
of scanner fame was involved. A copper cylinder with the brickwork like
screens in them already etched and filled again with a resin that then was
burned out by a computer controlled laser. What was removed by the laser per
nap then was filled with ink while printing. After the printrun all the
resin is melted out and the cylinder naps refilled with resin again. That
had the advantage that no new copper layer had to be applied, turned and
polished for every printrun like in the other processes. It didn't stop the
decline of rotogravure however.

Ernst