Photographic negative

A photographic negative is an image whose tones or colors are reversed from the scene it records. It serves as an intermediate from which positive prints or images can be made.

Latent image: An invisible image formed in a photosensitive material by exposure to light, made visible through chemical development. Exposure records a latent image in film before development reveals the negative.
Positive image: An image whose tones or colors correspond to those of the original subject. A positive reverses the negative's tonal or color relationships to restore the scene's appearance.
William Henry Fox Talbot: An English scientist and inventor who developed the calotype photographic process in the 1840s. Talbot's paper negatives made multiple positive prints possible from one exposure.
Black-and-white photography: Photography that records images using shades of gray rather than color. Black-and-white negatives encode brightness as a range of silver-image densities.
Reversal film: Photographic film processed to produce a positive image directly on the film base. It produces slides rather than the reversed image characteristic of negative film.
Photographic development: The chemical processing that converts a latent photographic image into a visible one. Development darkens exposed regions of film, producing the negative's tonal reversal.
Image density: A measure of how much light an image material absorbs or blocks. Greater density in a negative generally corresponds to greater exposure of the film.
Calotype: A nineteenth-century photographic process that used a paper negative to produce positive prints. It is an early negative-positive process and a direct ancestor of film photography.
Color negative film: Color film that records scene colors as complementary hues for conversion into positive images. Its orange mask and dye layers are designed for making color prints.
Digital negative: A digital file prepared as an intermediate for producing a photographic print, often through alternative processes. It is a printable digital source, not a light-sensitive film image formed in a camera.

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