Photo purchased from … www.depositphotos.com
When I was 14, I took a course in photography. It was 1972, so we didn’t have digital photography yet, and everything was based on light and chemistry. Our homework was to take the photos; our classwork was to develop and print them.
One of the things we learned how to do was to “spot” images we had printed on the enlarger. That is, we used an ultra-small, round brush with various inks (or dyes, actually), which we applied spot by spot on the emulsion of the photo print to correct flaws. Fortunately our work was entirely in black and white, since I can’t imagine doing such detailed work using colored inks or dyes.
Keep in mind that photos used in commercial printing are turned into halftones prior to the presswork. (That is, grids of equally-spaced small, medium, and large dots simulate more or less ink coverage and continuous tones, since offset lithography can only print “ink” or “no ink” rather than lighter or darker ink of the same color.)
In contrast, the retouching work I was doing was to correct continuous-tone images produced with silver halide crystals that had been exposed to light. To picture what this looked like, you might want to examine the output of an inkjet printer, in which the ink spots are all the same size, but there are more of them in areas of heavy ink coverage. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s close.
How It’s Done Now
To put all of this in perspective, during the intervening years between 1972 and 2022, we invented digital photography, so all of the retouching I was doing as a 14-year-old has migrated to Photoshop. A lot of the retouching work has been automated, but I have also done my share of detailed work with a virtual pen or brush on my computer. The goal has been the same: to work slowly under high magnification using a small brush. Fortunately we now have the concept of “Undo.” Back in 1972, if I made a mistake, I couldn’t revert to my last saved version, and scraping away spotting dye with a razor blade risked my scratching off the emulsion of the paper.
From Spotting Prints in 1972 to Painting Out Mold on a Poster in 2022
Within this context of photo prints, traditional vs. digital photography, and photo retouching, my fiancee came to me this week with a poster that had been in the garage for (probably) way more than the 18 years we have been together. In fact, it had been commercially printed for a Witkin Museum exhibit in New York in 1981, and the museum itself has apparently been defunct since the ‘90s.
Since the poster had been in the garage for so long, without a frame, in heat and humidity, it had visible mold spots and two tears in the paper. My fiancee remembered that she had loved the image, and she asked me to retouch it. (In part this was because neither she nor I could find a replacement copy of the poster anywhere on the internet.)
Retouching the Poster
I knew the poster would become valueless (financially) once I retouched it (by adding paint to an already printed poster). However, I also knew that my fiancee would have a visually improved poster that would make her happy.
The tears I could fix relatively easily from the back of the poster (a duotone, maybe 2 feet x 3 feet in size, of a child coming out of an egg) using linen tape. Linen tape is alkaline rather than acidic. Therefore it does not turn brown or become brittle after several decades.
This is actually a good concept for you to grasp if you’re a designer or buyer of commercial printing, because you may need to print a job that you want to last a very long time. Choosing what is called an “archival” paper, one that is alkaline, will make all the difference. (Look closely at books from the 1800s that are pristine, and compare them to paperback novels from 1970 that are yellowing and becoming brittle.)
My next step was to choose the paints. First I thought about using watercolors. These I could apply in thin washes, so I could build up areas of color gradually. However, I realized they would be impermanent: able to flake off or be reactivated with the slightest drop of water. Moreover, instead of painting them onto a porous background, into which they could seep, I would be painting the watercolors onto the matte or dull flood coating already printed over the entire poster.
So I chose acrylics. These I could water down to make an initial thin film, so I could retouch the poster gradually, instead of painting a thick film of color that would appear to be laid on top of the poster. And they would dry (or cure) to a permanent state (because acrylic paint actually dries to a permanent color film that can’t be reactivated by water, as watercolors can).
My fiancee had made an attempt herself, before I applied my paints. Unfortunately, she had painted in thick brush strokes and had not left subtle gradations between the original poster and her own painting work. So basically what I did was smooth out everything, making subtle changes between areas of light and shadow. I also repainted complete sections of the poster, for the most part. I didn’t leave a visible transition between my painted areas and the original print. When I couldn’t do this, I used a wet paper towel to thin the color and drag it across the poster, so it would be more transparent, revealing the original poster below.
I mentioned that my fiancee had painted a large area with a yellowish wash. But using my 12-power printer’s loupe, I could see that most of the poster contained minuscule halftone dots of cyan and black. So I was really looking at a cooler tone (a more bluish tint than the warm yellow wash my fiancee had added).
Interestingly enough, I found that white, Payne’s gray (a blue-gray color), and silver actually made a useful mixture (which could be made lighter or darker in accordance with the halftone dots on the printed poster). Then I used primarily white (“stippled” or added as tiny dots with a tiny brush) to obscure the brown mold stains in the whiter background of the poster toward its outer margins.
What We Can Learn from This Case Study
How can touching up a silver halide continuous tone photo and painting acrylics on an already printed poster be relevant to a contemporary graphic designer or commercial printing buyer? Here are some thoughts:
- Be mindful of what you are printing on. Printing ink will seep into an uncoated sheet. This will dull down the color. However, you may want that effect. In contrast, ink will sit up on top of a surface coating like that of a matte, dull, or gloss custom printing sheet. The halftone dots will be crisper, and the colors will be more vibrant. This may be the effect you want. (Neither uncoated nor coated paper is the correct choice; rather, it’s important to understand the different effects each will yield.) Consider the porosity of the substrate as well as its base tone (yellow-white or blue-white).
- Learn how to judge colors from either the halftone dot structure on an already printed poster (or other print job) or the color composition under the “info” cursor in Photoshop (i.e., understand the percentage mix of CMYK inks). This will help you adjust the images on the computer to remove a color cast. It will also help you retouch an image (let’s say you’re working with old photos that have been damaged, and you need to use Photoshop to recreate some detail that has been lost).
- If you’re doing digital retouching in Photoshop, be mindful of the opacity setting. (Can you see through the color or tone you’re adding?) Work at a large magnification, and then check the image at 100 percent size (some flaws will be below the threshold of visibility). Work slowly and delicately, and consider adding transparent colors in layers to achieve subtle transitions between what is already there and what you’re adding.
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on Sunday, September 25th, 2022 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Photos.
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