“What is silver halide printing?” This is by far the most common question I get on my reviews, and since I have been ranting about it for a year now I thought it’s time to clarify what it is and why we might need it.
1. What do these terms mean?
- Silver halide. When you think of your grandparents’ old photographs and your classy wedding photos, chances are they were printed using a silver halide method. It has been used for more than 100 years now and it’s the golden standard in portrait photography. Photos (digital or film) are exposed onto light sensitive, chemically coated photo paper, where each layer will react to a specific coloured light (silver particales are involved in the process; hence the name). Once the paper has been exposed to light, it will go through a developing stage where any leftover particles will be washed off and colours will magically appear on the paper. I am not going to explain the chemistry behind as I want to keep this practical and concise. The most important thing about this process is that it can yield an infinite range of colours within a very large gamut, and no dot structure. It also creates amazing, deep blacks and rich shadows/highlights. This method is also called continuous tone printing since colour and shade transitions are seamless.
- Digital. Digital printing is a vague term, it can mean anything from inkjet printers in your home to industrial offset printers. The main difference is that while in the silver halide method chemical reactions create the image, in digital prints ink/dye is transferred from a medium onto the paper (print head in inkjet printers or rollers in offset printers). To do this, a digital image has to be processed and broken down into dots or pixels, where each dot is an ink droplet. Therefore, when magnified, photos will never look continuous, they will be a fine cluster of dots which appear smooth to the human eye (optical illusion). This is called half tone printing.
2. What are the pros and cons?
- Colour: silver halide yields far more accurate colours since it uses RGB light as opposed to CMYK digital printers. Being a continuous tone method, it will look more natural on skin tones and in nature photogprahy, where natural shades are to be captured and reproduced.
- Sharpness: As mentioned above, silver halide printing yields very smooth transitions, which unfortunately is not too kind to text and fine details. Digital prints using small dots can create much stronger constrast making text or fine detial look sharper and clearer.
- Durability: This one is hard to judge, since it depends not only on the print method itself but the paper and its coating. Ignoring paper qualities, silver halide will be more durable, not only in colours but it’s also more scratch resistant. In digital printing the ink sits on the paper, which is more likely to smudge or get damaged. In the case of offset printers this is less of a problem, since the inks sink into the paper.
3. Which one to choose:
- Portrait/wedding/baby photography: Silver halide is the number one choice here. In these kind of books we want to see realistic, vibrant colours, natural tones and smooth shades. You don’t want your face to be made up of dots.
- Wildlife/nature photography: Same arguments apply here too. Anything shot in nature will look better in silver halide prints, they will look richer and more accurate in colour. In other words, your photos will come alive.
- Textbooks: digital printing is what you need. Books rich in text would not benefit from the advantages of silver halide printing and would make the text less legible.
- Architecture/Portfolio: the preferred choice is digital. When you print designs and buildings you want to see the finest details and silver halide will be less efficient than offset or inkjet printers.
- Travel books: This is the hardest choice of all! Travel books are mixture of beautiful landscapes, portrait, architecture photography and text/memorabilia. It’s a tie. I myself struggle to choose the best. I would say that if your books is mostly photos with minimal text, go with silver halide, but if you have lots of stories and building photos, go with a high def digital book.
- Instagram/Facebook: These books almsot almost always contain comments, tags etc… from your social media accounts and photos printed from social media are not exactly professional in resolution, so digital will do better with quality and your wallet too.
4. What company to choose:
- Silver halide: Every bigger town has a wedding album maker; these companies almost always use silver halide printing, however, many times they will not serve regular customers just professional photographers. Here are some international companies that anyone can order from: ZNO (Artisan State), Bob Books, Saal-Digital, Myphotobook.co.uk etc…
- Digital companies: 90% of the photo book market is still shared by digital books. However, the printers used can result in dramatically different quality. The best ones I have come across so far (this is by no means representative of the world supply, these are just ones that I have tried and was happy with): Shutterfly, FreePrints, Printastic, Apple, Simpleprints etc…
hi mate,
i’m following up on your post regarding silver halide printing. under “what company to choose” you list four companies and then “etc”. i’m really curious to know who “etc” is. i wanted to go with saal but they don’t deliver to australia, so i’m wanting to know as many companies as possible who use silver halide printing as my book will contain mostly portraits. if there’s more than those four, then i want to research them as well.
many thanks,
grant
Hi Grant, Zone Printing in Newcastle uses Silver Halide printing. I have been very happy with his pictures.
Cheers
Toni
thanks toni – much appreciated…
Not one sample of inkjet printing? Inkjet is not halftone!
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I am going to do a photo book and saw that the company offered silver halide printing, which I’d never heard of before. Your website was the third one I went to and was by far the most informative. Having the video to watch after reading about the differences cemented my understanding. Brilliant explanations, thank you.
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Hi. Really glad I came across your very interesting and informative website. One question to help me choose between silver halide and digital – I’m putting together a photobook with scans from a friend’s watercolours (ie not photos and not typography) – some natural scenes/landscapes and some had-painted cards, baby-names paintings, etc. I was considering Photobox for this, which offers silver halide as an option. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Thank you for your website! Can you tell me the best way to produce a photo book from 4×5 Ektachrome transparencies? I’ve had digital copies made for projecting the photos and now want to make a book. My graphic artist friend plans to use the digitals to produce the book. Is this the best way to proceed to gain the highest quality? Is there a another method you would recommend?
Great presentation on various types of photobooks. I was intrigued by the wooden photobook.