Alternative process

An alternative process is a non-traditional or non-commercial photographic printing process. Currently, the standard analog photographic printing process for black-and-white photographs is the gelatin silver process.¹ Standard digital processes include the pigment print, and digital laser exposures on traditional color photographic paper.

Alternative processes often overlap with historical, or non-silver processes. Most of these processes were invented over 100 years ago and were used by early photographers.²³

Many contemporary photographers are revisiting alternative processes and applying new technologies (the digital negative) and practices to these techniques.

• Anthotype – Image created using photosensitive material from plants
• Caffenol – Alternative photographic film development process
• Chrysotype – Photographic process invented by John Herschel
• Daguerreotype – Early photographic technique
• Gum bichromate and other Pigmented Dichromated Colloids which are used to directly generate a photographic print
• Platinum Process and Palladium Process
• Carbon print and various similar processes which use a non-sensitive intermediate layer to generate a photographic image
• Van Dyke Brown, Cyanotype and various other iron-based processes
• Wet and Dry Plate processes based in silver using a hand coated emulsion on a tin or aluminum (tintype) or glass (ambrotype) base
• Resinotype and several similar processes which rely upon unexposed dichromated colloids to accept an insoluble pigment
• Inkodye, a light-oxidized vat dye.
• Oil pigment processes, such as bromoil process
• Other processes which use silver halide but in various different ways other than the typical silver-gelatin formula, such as Salt Print
• Any number of processes which use more exotic materials, such as uranium chloride, gold chloride, and any number of other salts to directly or indirectly generate a photographic print
• Non standard digital manipulation or printing.