Photogravure (in French héliogravure) is a process for printing photographs, also sometimes used for reproductive intaglio printmaking. It is a photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained (adding a pattern to the plate) and then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio plate that can reproduce detailed continuous tones of a photograph. The process was important in 19th-century photography, but by the 20th century was only used by some fine art photographers. By the mid-century it was almost extinct, but has seen a limited revival. History History of process The earliest forms of photogravure were developed by two original pioneers of photography itself, first Nicéphore Niépce in France in the 1820s, and later Henry Fox Talbot in England. Niépce was seeking a means to create photographic images on plates that could then be etched and used to make prints on paper with a traditional printing press. He used prints (engravings etc.), waxing the paper to make it translucent, then laying this on a copper plate coated with light-sensitive bitumen. Niépce's early images were among the first photographs, pre-dating daguerreotypes and the later wet collodion photographic process. But the process was little used, not least because the original engraving was all but destroyed. But once a "transparent photographic positive" became possible, interest revived. Talbot, inventor of the calotype paper negative process, wanted to make paper prints that would not fade. He worked on his photomechanical process in the 1850s and patented it in 1852 ('photographic engraving') and 1858 ('photoglyphic engraving'). Photogravure in its mature form was developed in 1878 by Czech painter Karel Klíč, who built on Talbot's research. This process, the one still in use today, is called the Talbot-Klič process. History of use Because of its high quality and richness, photogravure was used for both original fine art prints in the form of photographs manipulated by various means on the negative and for photo-reproduction of works from other media such as paintings. From the 1880s, the Talbot-Klič process was used commercially for very high quality reproductions of old master prints, excelling in capturing variations in tone. Photogravure practitioners such as Peter Henry Emerson and others brought the art to a high standard in the late 19th century. This continued with the work of Alfred Stieglitz in the early 20th century, especially in