Continuous Tone Alternatives To Halftone Through Historical Reflection

Halftone printing has been developing in a linear manner since the inception of photography. The process of refinement has taken it from one level to another producing increasingly fine results principally by using higher resolution screens. Yet in spite of this focus and success, or perhaps because of it, the concept that has produced all this technology is rarely traced back to its roots, which are, in fact, pre-photographic. With the acceptance of a digital imaging paradigm the question of whether or not halftone is the best or even the only way to think about image representation becomes pertinent. Through historical investigation it is possible to find other concepts in processes and means that were developed contemporaneously with the nascent halftone photomechanical processes. An alternative concept to the halftone is introduced, that of translucent photographic relief, and practical applications and means are suggested that are sympathetic to digital production. The context of the early halftone Halftone was present from the beginning of photography. The earliest surviving photograph is not an image captured with a lens, but a reproduction of an etching, a method which functions through the use of a grid of lines, spaced and weighted to generate tones in an inexact but conceptually identical manner to the modern halftone dot. This is the heliotype of Cardinal D’Amboise, 1826, but Niépce had created heliotypes as early as 1822. Heliotype is a very early photomechanical process, which uses the light sensitive properties of bitumen of Judea, which hardens as it exposed, allowing a solvent based developer to reveal an image, which is ready to be etched. The image was created using the original etching as a positive. Cardinal D’Amboise, 1826, Niécephore Niépce. It was a similar notion which led William Henry Fox Talbot, the British claimant to the throne of photography, to devise the use of a muslin screen, and later a sheet of ruled glass, as the first patented halftone method. Later on, from the mid 1860’s to 80’s, patents were filed for developments of this principle, and halftone images started to appear in newspapers. In 1886 Frederick E. Ives patented the crossline screen in the US, and Georg Meisenbach did the same in 1882 in Europe, announcing the arrival of the mature technology. Yet, during this initial period of photography there were other competing paradigms of photographic imaging. The Woodburytype, invented by Walter Woodbury, exemplifies one of the most successful alternative conceptualizations of photographic production.