Contact print

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Contact print" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A contact print is a photographic image produced from film; sometimes from a film negative, and sometimes from a film positive or paper negative.^[1] In a darkroom an exposed and developed piece of film or photographic paper is placed emulsion side down, in contact with a piece of photographic paper, light is briefly shone through the negative or paper and then the paper is developed to reveal the final print.^[2]

The defining characteristic of a contact print is that the resulting print is the same size as the original, rather than having been projected through an enlarger.