Arpeggio-the process

This is a new solar print, Arpeggio. The image was created using digital photographs composited with various computer processes including a bit of hand drawing. That "original" is the top, left image. It was then printed out onto transparency film with an inkjet printer; the resulting positive transparency was then exposed to the solar plate, shown here at top right. Below that is the plate, developed, inked and ready to print - and the final print is bottom, left, allowing us to compare the intaglio final print with the digital "original". A digital print from the digital file is more precisely accurate, that is, optically close to what one sees on the computer screen. 

The intaglio image version, as you can see here is quite accurate. It is printed using a traditional, manual press and has its own qualities which include, at least for the artist (me), the intrinsic memory of all the stages and qualities - photographing, computer, image combining, altering, digital printing, plate exposure & development, inking and judging various factors including paper & press pressure.  While sensitive viewers cannot have the same involvement, looking will reward one with subtle revelations of what is special or typical of each kind of work. (Hence the comparison given here...)