Chromolithography

Chromolithography is a method for making multi-colour prints. This type of colour printing stemmed from the process of lithography,[1] and includes all types of lithography that are printed in colour.^{[citation needed]} When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrome is frequently used. Lithographers sought to find a way to print on flat surfaces with the use of chemicals instead of raised relief or recessed intaglio techniques.[2] A chromolithograph is also known as an oleograph.[3]

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History of printing
Techniques Woodblock printing 200 Movable type 1040 Intaglio (printmaking) 1430 Printing press c. 1440 Etching c. 1515 Mezzotint 1642 Relief printing 1690 Aquatint 1772 Lithography 1796 Chromolithography 1837 Rotary press 1843 Hectograph 1860 Offset printing 1875 Hot metal typesetting 1884 Mimeograph 1885 Daisy wheel printing 1889 Photostat and rectigraph 1907 Screen printing 1911 Spirit duplicator 1923 Dot matrix printing 1925 Xerography 1938 Spark printing 1940 Phototypesetting 1949 Inkjet printing 1950 Dye-sublimation 1957 Laser printing 1969 Thermal printing c. 1972 Solid ink printing 1972 Thermal-transfer printing 1981 3D printing 1986 Digital printing 1991
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Chromolithography became the most successful of several methods of colour printing developed by the 19th century; other methods were developed by printers such as Jacob Christoph Le Blon, George Baxter and Edmund Evans, and mostly relied on using several woodblocks with the colours. Hand-colouring also remained important; elements of the official British Ordnance Survey maps were coloured by hand by boys until 1875. The initial chromolithographic technique involved the use of multiple lithographic stones, one for each colour, and was still extremely expensive when done for the best quality results. Depending on the number of colours present, a chromolithograph could take even very skilled workers months to produce. However much cheaper prints could be produced by simplifying both the number of colours used, and the refinement of the detail in the image. Cheaper images, like advertisements, relied heavily on an initial black print (not always a lithograph), on which colours were then overprinted. To make an expensive reproduction print, once referred to as a "chromo", a lithographer, with a finished painting in front of him, gradually created and corrected the many stones using proofs to look as much as possible like the painting, sometimes using dozens of layers.[4]