
After the plate is sufficiently bitten it is removed from the acid bath, the ground is removed gently and the plate is usually dried or cleaned. Biting is a printmaking term to describe the acid's etching, or incising, of the image its duration depends on the acid strength, metal's reactivity, temperature, air pressure and the depth desired. The acid bites into the surface of the plate where it was exposed. The plate's ground side is then dipped into acid, or the acid poured onto it. Using etching needles or burins, the artist or writer (etcher) engraves their image (therefore to be only where the plate beneath is exposed).

In etching, for example, the plate is pre-covered in a thin, acid-resistant resin or wax ground. copper) plate by means either of a cutting tool called a burin, held in the hand – in which case the process is called engraving or through the corrosive action of acid – in which case the process is known as etching. In intaglio printing, the lines to be printed are cut into a metal (e.g. Īfter the decline of the main relief technique of woodcut around 1550, the intaglio techniques dominated both artistic printmaking as well as most types of illustration and popular prints until the mid 19th century. Collagraphs may also be printed as intaglio plates. Normally, copper or in recent times zinc sheets, called plates, are used as a surface or matrix, and the incisions are created by etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint or mezzotint, often in combination. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that make the image stand above the main surface.

Intaglio ( / ɪ n ˈ t æ l i oʊ, - ˈ t ɑː-/ in- TAL-ee-oh, - TAH- Italian: ) is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. Banknote portrait pattern made with intaglio printing.
