Bromoil printing requires a black and white silver gelatin print, made with bromoil printing in mind, and then bleached to the point of being nearly invisible. This leave a gelatin matrix on the paper which will hold varying amounts of ink depending on how light or dark that part of the image was originally. The ink is a standard etching press ink but it is applied slowly with a stencil brush. As the print is inked, the image slowly becomes visible again.

After the print is entirely inked, one can use it as-is or one can run it through an etching press and print a reversed image onto a suitable printmaking paper. Each print requires hand-inking the gelatin matrix rather than rolling the ink onto a plate as is done with many etchings.