The process of creating Ukiyo-e prints was an intensive one, involving four different parts in the production: the publishers, the artists, the woodblock carvers, and the printers, with publishers and artists being the most prestigious members involved in the process and the only ones who would be credited on the final prints.

Publishers would oversee the requisition of paintings from artists and the production and distribution of prints. The business of publishing houses was quite competitive, with no more than over 200 publishers being available across Japan at the height of the popularity of Ukiyo-e, most of them based in Edo (Tokyo), with each publisher holding copyrights to their own woodblocks and prints.

Artists of Ukiyo-e prints were very popular and influential throughout Edo society, enjoying a celebrity status and usually signing their names on the prints they had designed. Artists would start off as members of different art schools and apprentice underneath master painters, with major artists going on to design up to thousands upon thousands of different prints throughout their lifetimes. Some of the more famous artists include Katsushika Shunshō, Kitagawa Utamaro, Utagawa Kunisada, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Tōshūsai Sharaku, and the particularly famous landscape painters, Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige.

Woodcarvers (horishi) had a long and intensive process to carve out the wood blocks for printmaking, with sometimes more than a dozen woodblocks needed for the production of a single print to create the different layers of color for color images.

Printers (surishi) also had an intensive role to play during the production of prints as well, with each Ukiyo-e print being made by hand by overlaying a sheet of paper on an inked woodblock and smoothing down the paper with a tool, applying varying degrees of pressure for the strength of lines as well as adding special effects to the print, such as embossing the paper before inking or applying special effects to the finished print such as burnishing certain colors appear brighter or spraying the paper with ink to imitate snowfall (Amsden 2007; Ellis 2019; Kozbelt and Durmysheva 2007; Thompson 1986).