The four classes of printmaking are intaglio, relief, planographic, and stencil.
In the intaglio process an incised plate is inked and then wiped leaving ink in the incised lines. Dampened paper is placed on the plate and they are passed through a roller press. The process lifts the ink onto the paper. Engraving, etching, aquatint, stipple, drypoint, and photogravure are forms of intaglio prints.
A relief print is created by raised areas of the matrix or printing block material. The areas of the block not to be printed are cut away. Ink is rolled onto the raised areas, the paper is pressed against the block and the ink is transferred to the paper. Examples are metalcuts, woodcut, wood engraving, linocut, line-block, half-tone block and cliché verre.
In planography there is no difference in level between the inked surface and the non-inked surface. It includes lithographs, zincographs, aluminographs, and photolithographs.
A Stenciled print is produced by applying the ink onto the paper’s surface through cut stencils. This is the one type of printmaking that does not reverse the image. Examples are pochoir, screenprint or silkscreening and serigraph, considered a fine art screenprint.