Photogravure is an intaglio printmaking process initially developed in the 1830s by Henry Fox Talbot in England and Nicéphore Niépce in France. These early images were among the first photographs. Photogravure in its mature form was developed in 1878 by Czech painter Karel Klitsch(1841-1926).  Photogravure was developed to provide an archivally permanent way of reproducing a photographic image. Because of its high quality and richness, photogravure was used for both original fine art prints and for photo-reproduction of works from other media such as paintings. Photogravure is distinguished from rotogravure in that photogravure uses a flat copperplate etched rather deeply and printed by hand, while in rotogravure, as the name implies, a rotary cylinder is only lightly etched, and it is a factory printing process for newspapers, magazines, and packaging. Due to an unfortunate confusion of terms, searches for "photogravure" on the web often turn up industrial machinery designed for rotogravure. In France the correct term for photogravure is héliogravure, while the French term photogravure refers to any photo-based etching technique.

 

Photogravure registers an extraordinary variety of tones, through the transfer of etching ink from an etched copperplate to special dampened paper run through an etching press. The unique tonal range comes from photogravure's variable depth of etch, that is, the shadows are etched many times deeper than the highlights. Unlike half-tone processes which merely vary the size of dots, the actual quantity and depth of ink wells are varied in a photogravure plate and are often blended into a smooth tone by the printing process. Photogravure practitioners such as Peter Henry Emerson and others brought the art to a very high standard of expression in the late 19th century. This continued with the work of Alfred Stieglitz in the early 20th century, especially in relation to his publication Camera Work. This publication also featured the photogravures of Alvin Langdon Coburn who was a fine gravure printer and envisioned his photographic work as gravures rather than other photo-based processes. The speed and convenience of silver-gelatin photography eventually displaced photogravure which fell into disuse after the Edward S. Curtis gravures in the 1920s. Many years later, photogravure has experienced a revival. Photogravure is now actively practiced in several dozen workshops around the world.