Alternative to retouching fluid

rbrigham · Nov 4, 2013

Hi

I'm trying to buy some retouching fluid but it dose not seem to be available anymore
dose anybody have an alliterative or a simple recipe
I guess that some sort of painters matt varnish may work

thanks for any ideas

robin

RalphLambrecht · Nov 4, 2013

rbrigham said:
Hi

I'm trying to buy some retouching fluid but it dose not seem to be available anymore
dose anybody have an alliterative or a simple recipe
I guess that some sort of painters matt varnish may work

thanks for any ideas

robin

noproblem, use a chinese ink stick and some spit!

David A. Goldfarb · Nov 4, 2013

I assume you mean clear retouching fluid that gives some "tooth" to the base of a negative for working with pencil on the neg, rather than a dye for spotting, which you can do with ink as Ralph describes.

Old retouching manuals have recipes for this, but my retouching manuals are inaccessible at the moment. I seem to recall a preparation made with linseed oil.

One thing I've managed to reconstruct from this era is abrasive reducer, which you can make by mixing brown tripoli and mineral oil into a paste with a mortar and pestle. A small amount seems to last forever.

AgX · Nov 4, 2013

You might look for a matting spray with a binder which is easy to dissolve. By this you facilitate application as well as removal.

removed account4 · Nov 4, 2013

also, don't use hardened fixer ... hardener won't give you anything even remotely "toothy"

David A. Goldfarb · Nov 5, 2013

You can also shoot films that have a retouching base and don't require a retouching fluid, like Tri-X sheet film (last I checked--I still have a fair amount of older stock in the freezer).

RalphLambrecht · Nov 9, 2013

rbrigham said:
Hi

I'm trying to buy some retouching fluid but it dose not seem to be available anymore
dose anybody have an alliterative or a simple recipe
I guess that some sort of painters matt varnish may work

thanks for any ideas

robin

There is a simple recipe in AA's book'ThePrint', which may work for you;it did for me.

rbrigham · Nov 9, 2013

thanks Ralph

I had a look n the Print but could not find the recipe
which page is it on

thanks

robin

RalphLambrecht · Nov 10, 2013

I have to takea look,but I tried it and itworked.

RalphLambrecht · Nov 11, 2013

found it!. in my 1995 edition 23th printing, it is at the bottom of page 196; all the best; give it a go.

AgX · Nov 12, 2013

There are at least four ways of negative retouching:

adding density
-) with a pencil (which needs a rough surface, yielded by a matte varnished, about which the OP is informing)
-) with visible or chemically (red) opaque varnish

reducing density
-) by scraping with a scalpel
-) by bleaching

cowanw · Nov 13, 2013

Authur Hammond's retouching book 1948 suggests.
one part gum dammar to 10 parts benzene and 10 parts turpentine with a few drops of oil of lavender or caster oil.
or
Venice turpentine thinned with ordinary spirits of turpentine to the consistency of molasses
or
leave some turpentine in a poorly stoppered bottle until it becomes partly resinified.

AgX · Nov 13, 2013

AgX said:
You might look for a matting spray with a binder which is easy to dissolve. By this you facilitate application as well as removal.

Kenair Antireflex Matting Spray might be useful, but most probaly it will be too coarse.

David A. Goldfarb · Nov 15, 2013

Hammond's book is the one I have somewhere in storage.

DREW WILEY · Nov 15, 2013

Some sheet films still have excellent tooth, some do not. Traditional photo sprays were typically based on butyacetate lacquer - quick drying but not very healthy. Now you can go to the art store and get an equivalent acrylic spray for the base side of the film to give some tooth, but all such techniques are a bit risky, messy, and probably non-archival. You can also simply register a sheet of frosted mylar and do your retouching on that, for any format, if you don't want to tamper with the original neg. Red creosin dye takes some patience to find, but a little bottle of the dry powder will probably last you a lifetime. But there are all kinds of pen and pencil ways to do things. It's interesting to haunt
used bookstores on rainy days, where the guy at the counter is himself covered with cobwebs, and thumb thru the section of photo books.
You often find old Kodak graphics and photo manuals with all kinds of these forgotten techniques illustrated.

AgX · Nov 15, 2013

Those bookshops are vanishing faster than films...

DREW WILEY · Nov 15, 2013

Still lots of scruffy used book stores around here. What are vanishing are all the stores selling new books. There used to be a wonderful one right down the street which had entire aisles of excellent photo books you could browse thru. Then there was a another excellent store uptown, plus several stores dedicated to medical and scientific and even rare historical subjects. All victims of Amazon.

RalphLambrecht · Nov 15, 2013

DREW WILEY said:
Still lots of scruffy used book stores around here. What are vanishing are all the stores selling new books. There used to be a wonderful one right down the street which had entire aisles of excellent photo books you could browse thru. Then there was a another excellent store uptown, plus several stores dedicated to medical and scientific and even rare historical subjects. All victims of Amazon.

We are all victims of Amazon. They make 6times what |I(the author) make on every book,but what the heck. It's better than 100% of nothing.

DREW WILEY · Nov 15, 2013

Not better than nothing if you want to evaluate whether the pictures in a book make it worth purchasing or not. I won't buy that kind of thing sight unseen; nor will I gamble on whether or not it will be shipped undamaged. With high-quality imagery, it's a different game than mere text
content. So this new marketing trend could (and probably already has) significantly had a negative cumulative impact. And if folks are just going
to preview the image contents over the web, half of them are probably not going to buy the book anyway. Steamroller monopolies are rarely
good for anybody in the long run.

Alternative to retouching fluid

rbrigham

RalphLambrecht

David A. Goldfarb

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AgX

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David A. Goldfarb

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rbrigham

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cowanw

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DREW WILEY

AgX

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DREW WILEY

Alternative to retouching fluid

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