So you have a camera that requires film to capture the image. How does it go from your camera to a picture sheet?
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So, film has a coating on it that contains tiny grains of silver that are chemically sensitized to light. When you take a picture, those grains are “hardened” (not actually hardened, but the chemistry gets pretty complicated to describe it accurately) based on how much light they were exposed to. More light = more hardened grains in that area.
So, you finish your roll, then it has to be developed, which does three things: it turns the hardened grains dark, it washes out any unhardened grains, and it stops the silver from being sensitive to light any more.
Then you have a negative. Areas that got more light are darker, less light are lighter, and everything in between.
Then, it’s more of the same.
You project that negative through another lens onto a sheet of paper coated in a similar silver-bearing material, and the whole process repeats: areas that get more light turn darker, areas that get less light stay lighter (remember how the brightest areas of the negative turned darker?). Develop that paper much the same as the film, dry it, and presto: a printed photograph.
Color is basically the same, just with multiple layers of coating that have dyes to block specific colors of light from getting through particular layers, and the same deal for the paper.
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