Albumen printing is a 19th-century method of making photographic prints on paper coated with egg white (albumen). The albumen holds the light-sensitive silver salts on the surface of the paper. This gives sharper detail and a smoother, glossier surface than earlier salted paper prints.
The process was introduced in 1850 by the Frenchman Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard (1802-1872). Prints were usually made by contact with a glass negative. Albumen paper was the most common printing paper until the 1890s, when gelatin silver papers replaced it.
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