Litho printing was introduced into China in the mid-19th century as a alternative of wood print. The stone plate for lithograph is a kind of pure and refined limestone with tiny pores that can absorb water. According to the principle of mutual repulsion of water and oil, fine artists draw paintings on the stone plate with crayon of oil nature and then apply water on it. Since the parts with crayon on the plate reject water but absorb oil, so after putting on printing ink, the plate can print lithographs. After printing, the stone plate can be burnished for another use. There are 2 ways for burnishing the plate. One is to polish it by a rub-stone with water. This will result in a surface as smooth as a mirror, thus the name mirror plate. The other is to apply corundum onto the rub-stone and make the surface rough like painting paper, thus called rough plate. The degree of roughness can be adjusted by adding different grains of coru.

In China, drypoint (etching) refers to all intaglio prints in contrast to those made of xylograph (anastitic print), lithograph (planography print), serigraph (sieve print) etc. Nowadays, print is not limited to those made of copper, wood, stone or silk. This is especially true to drypoints. But in China, people still call all anastatic prints drypoints because originally the print plate is copper.

As a late comer but shining star in the family of prints, serigraph has gained favor of all collectors and it is to become a mainstream of print in the current world. But in China, most people remain strangers to it yet.

The woodblock printing of paintings (xylograph) in China has a long history, massive scale and great varieties. Before the rising of the modern printing technology, it was the only way to spread fine arts by duplication by way of woodblock printing. The rise of modern printing has discharged xylograph of its function of diffusing fine art. But due to its unique charm, xylograph remains unshakable variety of fine arts.

Based on the method, colligated prints (collagraphs) can be divided into two kinds. The first kind is to produce a pattern with knaggy feature on the face of mould by colligated use of materials and then, an etching printing machine can reproduce this pattern on a sheet of soaked paper. The second kind is to form a print by colligated use of techniques from drypoint, xylograph, lithograph and serigraph onto one piece of artifact. The product of both methods is called collagraph.