Your first afternoon of cyanotype printing

Cyanotype turns iron chemistry and UV light into vivid Prussian-blue images. No darkroom, no enlarger, no film scanner. Just two chemicals, a brush, paper, and sunlight. Your first real print can happen this afternoon.

By Colin B. · Published June 13, 2026

Cyanotype is the kind of process that sounds complicated until you do it once, and then feels almost too simple. Two chemicals mixed together, brushed onto paper, dried in a drawer, pressed under some flat objects or a film negative, exposed to UV light, rinsed in water. Prussian blue appears. That’s the whole thing.

It was invented in 1842 by astronomer John Herschel. Anna Atkins used it to document British algae specimens and produced what historians consider the first photographic book. Those prints survive today, still vivid blue, as stable as anything in traditional photography.

You don’t need a darkroom, an enlarger, a chemical developer, or a fixer bath. You don’t need a film camera or a scanner. What you need is a sunny window, a cheap hake brush, some watercolor paper, and a $30 bottle of pre-mixed Jacquard chemistry.

Setting up your workspace

You’re working with a UV-sensitive coating, which means you need to avoid direct sunlight and bright windows during the coating and drying steps. You don’t need total darkness. A normally lit room with indirect daylight is fine. A bathroom or kitchen with one window facing away from sun is fine. You can work in the middle of the day; you just can’t let the coated paper sit under a skylight.

What you’ll need ready before you start:

• A flat, protected surface for coating (newspaper works fine)
• Your Jacquard Cyanotype Set Parts A and B, premixed equal parts in a small cup
• A 2-inch hake brush or foam brush
• Sheets of 140 lb watercolor paper cut to your working size
• A dark drawer, box, or closet shelf where coated sheets can dry
• Two plastic trays and access to a tap for rinsing finished prints

Mix Part A and Part B in equal volumes. The sensitizer is a pale yellowish-green color and looks completely unimpressive. Don’t judge it. Once you’ve mixed what you need, work quickly. Put the bottles back in a dark cabinet; light degrades both the bottles and the freshly coated paper.

Coating and drying

Lay a sheet of watercolor paper on your protected surface. Load the hake brush with sensitizer and apply it in long, parallel, overlapping strokes. The goal is an even, thin coat. Don’t go back over wet areas you’ve already coated; the brush will lift and streak the sensitizer.

An 8x10 sheet takes about 20 seconds to coat. When you’re done, the paper should look uniformly yellowish-green with no dry patches or drips.

Carry the sheet to your dark drying area and lay it flat. Let it dry for at least 90 minutes, or until the paper feels completely dry to the touch. Partially dried paper gives washed-out prints. Impatient is the most common beginner mistake.

Two things to know about drying:

• Coat 4-6 sheets at once. Drying time doesn’t compress; you might as well make a batch. Working in multiples is also how you run exposure tests without waiting an hour between every attempt.
• Dried sheets keep for a day or two in the dark. Coat in the evening and print the next morning. The chemistry doesn’t have a dramatically shorter shelf life once on paper; it just needs to stay away from light.

Making your first photograms

A photogram is a cyanotype made by pressing flat objects directly onto the sensitized paper. No camera, no negative, no transparency film. Leaves, keys, scissors, a fern frond, a paper doily, your hand. Whatever you can press flat.

Take a dried, coated sheet to your exposure location. Outside in direct sunlight is ideal for your first prints. Place the paper sensitizer-side up. Lay your objects on top, pressing them down as flat as possible. Objects with air gaps underneath will have soft, blurry edges; tight contact means sharp edges.

Expose in direct sunlight. Exposure times vary enormously by season, latitude, and cloud cover. Start with 5-8 minutes on a clear summer day, 10-15 minutes on a hazy or winter day. The exposed paper will shift from yellow-green to a grayish or blue-gray color as it prints. That color change is your visual cue.

After exposure, move indoors. Remove your objects. Fill one tray with tap water and submerge the print. You’ll watch Prussian blue appear almost immediately as the unexposed areas (covered by your objects) turn deep blue and the exposed areas wash to white or off-white. Run a second, clean water rinse for a few minutes. The greenish-yellow cast washes out completely as the print develops.

Lay prints face-up to dry. The colors deepen and stabilize as the print dries. What looks slightly washed-out wet is usually right when dry.

Reading your first results

Your first prints will tell you exactly what to adjust. Here’s how to read them:

Too dark overall, no contrast between the print areas and the image areas: your exposure was too long, or your chemistry is too concentrated. Cut exposure time by a third and reprint.

Too light and washed out, the blue barely distinguishable from white: underexposed. Add 30-50% more time and reprint.

Uneven patches or streaks: coating technique. Try longer, smoother brush strokes and make sure the brush is fully loaded before each pass.

Blue bleeding under object edges: your objects weren’t flat enough, or you moved the print mid-exposure. More weight (a sheet of glass on top) and steady handling help.

The image looks right in the areas that should be dark, but the background isn’t clearing to white: the rinse wasn’t long enough. Run a longer final water wash.

Make a test strip on your second session: coat a full sheet, expose one section at a time (covering the rest with cardboard), stepping up exposure in 2-minute increments. The resulting strip shows you the full exposure range of your paper and chemistry in a single session, and you never have to guess again.

Moving to digital negatives

Photograms are satisfying and you should stay with them longer than you think. But most cyanotypists eventually want to print from photographs.

A digital negative is exactly what it sounds like: a photographic negative printed on transparency film. You print from a computer, load the negative into a contact printing frame against your sensitized paper, expose, and rinse. The result is a photograph in Prussian blue on white.

To make a digital negative:

1. Open your photo in free software like GIMP or Photoshop.
2. Convert to grayscale if it isn’t already.
3. Invert the image (Image → Invert, or Ctrl+I). Shadows become highlights, highlights become shadows.
4. Print on transparency film using an inkjet printer. Standard inkjet ink works, but dedicated OHP film (like Pictorico) gives better ink density for sharper shadow detail.
5. Let the transparency dry completely before using it. Wet ink offsets onto the sensitized paper.

One adjustment most cyanotypists add: the process has lower contrast than digital printing, so shadows that look detailed in the original can print as flat black. A modest S-curve (slightly more contrast in the midtones) before inverting compensates. You’ll dial this in over your first dozen negatives.

Things that trip up beginners

Every first-session mistake is predictable. Here’s what you’ll run into:

Coating under too much light: the paper starts exposing before you finish drying. Your prints look fogged (no clear whites, muddy shadows). Work in lower-light conditions and dry faster.

Rushing the drying: wet or partially dry paper processes all wrong. Wait the full 90 minutes, even when it seems dry enough.

Forgetting to press objects flat: anything with air under it goes soft-edged. A sheet of glass laid on top during exposure solves this; so does a proper contact printing frame.

Inconsistent sunlight: one cloud cuts your exposure by a third. This is the best argument for a UV lamp: 3 minutes at consistent output every time, regardless of season or weather.

Over-rinsing or under-rinsing: too short a rinse leaves a yellowish tinge in the highlights. Too long a rinse in very cold water can slightly shift the blue. Two clean water rinses of 2-3 minutes each is reliable for almost any chemistry and paper combination.

None of these are permanent failure modes. They’re calibration. Cyanotype is fast enough to reprint within the hour.

What comes next

After you’ve printed a few solid photograms and tried your first digital negative, three directions open up.

Fabric printing: the same chemistry coats cotton muslin beautifully. Cyanotype on fabric produces washable, permanent prints that work as tote bags, bandanas, and wall hangings. The exposure times are longer than paper and the image tone is richer.

Toning: finished cyanotype prints can be treated with tea, coffee, or gold toner to shift the blue to warmer browns or olive tones. Tea toning is free and experimental; gold toning is expensive and precise.

New cyanotype (Mike Ware’s formula): a modified formula that produces finer resolution, deeper shadows, and a wider tonal range than classic cyanotype. More complex to mix but noticeably better for portrait work.

You don’t need any of these on day one. But cyanotype is one of those processes where every solved problem reveals a more interesting problem, and most practitioners keep finding new things to try years in.

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Ready to buy the gear? See our cyanotype printing gear guide for the chemistry, paper, UV lamp, and coating tools worth buying first and what you can skip for now.