burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Thanks, JimmyT.

Be careful! The Warning is a deep, deep rabbit hole to fall into. Even the stuff they recorded in 2015 is great. By 2017, they were amazing. Who writes a double concept album when they're in middle school? Oh yeah, that's Paulina Villarreal, Drumeo's 2023 Rock Drummer of the Year... with a lot of help from her sisters. Sheer genius... They're one of the few bands that sounds great in the studio, but even better live!

MrPhotog

Did a workshop in early 80s, so memory may be fading.

With current tech, you would make a digital printout on transparent film with eitherer a laser printer or an inkjet printer using pigmented inks.

The process is covered in Christina Z. Anderson’s book on cyanotypes, and probably in any forum on alt photo processes.

Not sure about converting a printer, but An Epson ‘chrome’ printer model was mentioned. I couldn’t fond info on that specific model, but did find several Epson printers using their ‘chrome’ pigmented inks.

I’m assuming the solid pigment inks are needed to give enough density, and block UV light enough to make the magic happen when exposing the plates. Whether you can convert older printers to these inks by simply changing cartridges, or not, probably varies by printer make, model, and availability of the inks.

Here is a link to making digital negatives for cyanotypes, and the author uses an HP inkjet printer.

https://mpaulphotography.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/cyanotype-digital-negatives-a-basic-how-to/

And here is a more recent one:

https://jonahcalinawan.com/blog/cyanotype-digital-negative/

Googling ‘digital negatives for cyanotype’ gives a lot of hits. The process should be tge same for gravure, but the tonal range, density or contrast may need to be tweeked a bit differently.

Depending on the resist being used you might need to adjust the gamma and density of your negatives or positives. You can also do this in photoshop by using the output sliders in the levels tool window.

This is the same start as many of the silver-less alternative print processes ( like cyanotype) Depending on your process you could make this either a positive or negative. If you wanted a dot pattern to define wells, you can use photoshop and select a dot screen size in the print menu options. 300 lines per inch used to be the standard for rotogravure printing. That might be too fine for your press. If so, try 200 or 250 lines per inch.