The earliest commonly used method for printing photographic images on paper, salt prints were employed by the Scottish duo of Hill and Adamson in the 1840s. To make a salt print, an artist would coat the paper by hand with a saturated solution of salt water, then sensitize it with silver nitrate before exposing it in sunlight in direct contact with the negative. Because the sensitized solution saturates the paper fibers rather than resting on the surface, the final image appears soft and matte.