Mezzotinting was relatively unknown in the United States until it was brought to prominence by John Sartain . The process is based on the principle that grease and water do not mix. The image is printed onto the paper from the stone or plate, which can be re-inked many times without wear. A chromolithograph is a colored lithograph, with at least three colors, in which each color is printed from a separate stone and where the image is composed from those colors. A tinted lithograph is a lithograph whose image is printed from one stone and which has wash color for tinting applied from one or two other stones.
Lithography is a planographic process and so no platemark is created when a lithograph is printed.
Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in 1798 but didn't come into general use until the 1820s. After that time lithography quickly replaced intaglio processes for most illustrative and commercial applications, for the design was easier to apply to the stone or plate, it was much easier to rework or correct a design, and many more images could be produced without loss of quality than in any of the intaglio processes. A photomechanical or process print is created from a matrix upon which the image has been photographically transferred from an original source. There is no direct hand work involved in creating the matrix and thus a photomechanical print is considered to be a reproduction rather than an original print. Photomechanical methods were developed in the late nineteenth century.