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Encyclopedic overview
Micro-topography of an ordinary French post stamp (detail) showing the thickness of ink obtained by intaglio. The words la Poste appeared in white on red background and hence corresponds to areas with a lack of ink. Banknote portrait pattern made with intaglio printing. Denomination: 1000 Hungarian forint. Depicted area: 18.1 by 13.5 millimetres (0.71 in × 0.53 in).
Intaglio (/ɪnˈtæli.oʊ, -ˈtɑːli-/ in-TAL-ee-oh, -TAH-lee-; Italian: [inˈtaʎʎo]) is the group of printing and printmaking techniques in which an image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that make the image stand above the main surface.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “intaglio printing” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.