What is a Print?
A print (short for fine art print) is a work of graphic art that has been conceived by the artist to be an original work of art, rather than a copy of a work in another medium. The print image is produced by painting, scratching, etching or carving an image onto a hard surface (known as the matrix) such as a wood or linoleum block, metal or Plexiglas plate, or stone. The image from an inked plate is transferred to paper by the application of pressure, thus creating an impression, or print. The printed image is the exact reverse of the image on the plate. The paper can be run through the press any number of times with separately inked plates to create layered and colored images of great subtlety and complexity. 

Authenticity
Unlike paintings or drawings, prints usually exist in multiple impressions, each of which has been created from the plate that is inked and printed one at a time. An edition is a collection of prints made from the same plate or a group of plates (multi plate print) inked in the same way, and as close to identical as a hand process can be. In addition to printing editions, artists may use similar methods to produce one-of-a-kind impressions such as monoprints.

Artists began to sign and number each impression around the turn of the 20th century to ensure that only the editions they intended to make would be in circulation. The artist must explicitly authorize subsequent printmaking runs from plates that have been used to print an edition. The permission to print the edition is therefore just as important to the authenticity of a print as the act of inscribing or applying the image to the plate.