The Woodburytype is a 19th century photomechanical technique, producing high-quality continuous-tone prints that use a mixture of pigment and gelatine as a relief print, in which the variation in height of the print produces the tone and contrast. We propose a phenomenological optical model for the process based on Kubelka-Munk theory that considers the ink formulation, the print height and the substrate surface in order to provide the ideal combination of printing depth and contrast.
D. J. Leech, W. Guy, S. Klein, "The Optical Properties of the Woodburytype – An Alternative Printing Technique Based on a Gelatine/Pigment Matrix" in Proc. IS&T Printing for Fabrication: Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP35), 2019, pp 42 - 47, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2019.35.42