Desaturate shadows and highlights

Hi,

I would like to know how one can achieve desaturated shadows and highlights in colour enlarging. I assume I should create density masks to begin with.

Thanks

Masking is indeed the path forward, but it's not so much a single technique as a giant toolbox of options. Doing it well takes practice and precisely matched punch and register gear. It's easiest to learn basic unsharp contrast reduction masks first and go from there; and then it can be either as simple or as complicated as you wish. You need some patience for the learning curve, just like any serious photographic operation. It's also important to have a clean work environment and meticulous darkroom habits, because any dust on film will get reproduced on successive registered sheets.

DREW WILEY said:

Masking is indeed the path forward, but it's not so much a single technique as a giant toolbox of options. Doing it well takes practice and precisely matched punch and register gear. It's easiest to learn basic unsharp contrast reduction masks first and go from there; and then it can be either as simple or as complicated as you wish. You need some patience for the learning curve, just like any serious photographic operation. It's also important to have a clean work environment and meticulous darkroom habits, because any dust on film will get reproduced on successive registered sheets.

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I'd be doing it in a few years at the earliest, but making sounds interesting. It seems to me that without it the C41/RA4 combination has only a little more flexibility than E6, contrast wise. Not that I'm complaining. So far it's been quite beginner friendly.

Having searched the web a little I've got the impression that you can't get registration equipment for 35mm. I may remember medium format, but not sure. But definitely large format. The latter I'd love to do but it would require to nearly start from scratch equipment wise. Maybe after a giant diamond meteorite landed on my balcony...

What's your opinion, can small formats get used for masking, today?

The larger the format, the more precise registration is. As a beginner at this kind of thing, I just used a little Gepe slide punch over a light box and matching registered Anti-Newton glass slide holders. Then I went to the 6x7 version of the same. This was affordable and convenient for basic learning purposes, but not really precise. How small film like 35mm and 120 is preferably done is by taping it to a punched strip cut off a sheet of 4x5 film, and then using full 4x5 sheet film with a matching registration contact frame for the masking process. Polyester sheet film is much stiffer and more dimensionally stable than acetate film. So yes, you can shoot in any format you prefer. But masking is best done on sheet film. Then when placed back in register on the precision pin glass, you tape the two together for printing, which can be done in any glass negative carrier using a 4x5 enlarger (which tend to be far more abundant and affordable on the used market than small enlargers anyway). So in summary, I recommend investing up front in a 4x5 masking system, even if you plan to shoot with smaller cameras.

How much work is this? I love colour printing, but having come from digital it seems painful to create masks in a darkroom

Contrast masking is one thing (and difficult enough). Partially adjusting saturation (while keeping color fidelity in those areas) sounds like a whole new can of worms.

Everything is too much work in this day age of instant everything. But people still put a lot of time into good home cooking, even though you can just drive up to a window to get a greasy burger. No worms. Instead, you can cook a filet mignon if you wish. But it won't come in a can.

DREW WILEY said:

The larger the format, the more precise registration is. As a beginner at this kind of thing, I just used a little Gepe slide punch over a light box and matching registered Anti-Newton glass slide holders. Then I went to the 6x7 version of the same. This was affordable and convenient for basic learning purposes, but not really precise. How small film like 35mm and 120 is preferably done is by taping it to a punched strip cut off a sheet of 4x5 film, and then using full 4x5 sheet film with a matching registration contact frame for the masking process. Polyester sheet film is much stiffer and more dimensionally stable than acetate film. So yes, you can shoot in any format you prefer. But masking is best done on sheet film. Then when placed back in register on the precision pin glass, you tape the two together for printing, which can be done in any glass negative carrier using a 4x5 enlarger (which tend to be far more abundant and affordable on the used market than small enlargers anyway). So in summary, I recommend investing up front in a 4x5 masking system, even if you plan to shoot with smaller cameras.

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Thanks for the description. Which sheet film are you using and which developer? I found the chapter in Cteins book now. He was using a self mixed phenidone only developer with TMax 100. He also wasn't using a punch register to my surprise. Given the cost I'm inclined to try it without just to see what it does and perhaps get the equipment later.

I have a few sheets of Delta 100, which came with my pinhole camera. I'm using Fomapan 400 in the camera, so the Delta would be the obvious choice for such experiments. I also have ortho lith film Rollei ATO 2.1. I tried contact printing mediumformat negatives onto it once. Wasn't too bad looking but I decided I'd need a low contrast developer recipe first and that's where I still am.

The ATO should be polyester base, I believe, but very thin. This film was probably not intended to be sheet film.

Ctein told me he had potentially switched over to the newer formula I concocted, but this would have been experimentally at most; he didn't routinely mask either color neg film or even transparency film because he worked with the alternative Pan Matrix Film version of Dye Transfer which used direct color neg exposures. Then he worked parallel in inkjet via his own profile script. Now he seems to be spending a lot of time writing SciFi novels. By far the best film choices for masking are, first, TMax 100, and second, FP4. Masking for color neg film is a lot like power steering. You want just a little. And with most films it's almost impossible to achieve a very long straight line at a very low contrast gamma. And you want a true pan film because you're working with color film originals. The procedure is a bit involved but rather easy to repeat once you're set up with the right gear and have practiced a bit. My developer is simply a very dilute version of HC-110 with a toe-cutter added. You mix up your HC-110 concentrate 1:3 for stock, then dilute this 1:31 for use. The toe cutter is 2ml 1% benzotriazole per liter. Easy. I won't go into many details here, but for learning purposes you want to aim for around .30 DMax above fbf on a typical color neg film contrast reduction mask. Contrast-increase masks require a double negative procedure. Specific hues can be increased or diminished via color filters. But for a neutral effect you want your colorhead set around 5000K. Assuming you're going to be exposing your mask in a registered contact frame on the easel rather than by projection, you add below your lens a voided sheet of the same type of color neg film you are masking; in other words, a sheet developed with no image on it, but just the orange mask itself, in order to null out that mask on the film original itself. Then I also like to add a Hoya XO or Wratten 11 light yellow-orange filter to offset the slightly depressed green sensitivity in Pan black and white film. I won't go into specific punch and register technique here.

Michael R. got very straight lines with his series of low contrast developers.

That's interesting. But for masking, especially color masking, you don't want any kind of stain. Most pyro developers create a yellowish stain. And for color neg masking you generally need even less contrast than on those charts. That's because the built-in orange mask has already done most of the heavy lifting.

DREW WILEY said:

That's interesting. But for masking, especially color masking, you don't want any kind of stain. Most pyro developers create a yellowish stain. And for color neg masking you generally need even less contrast than on those charts. That's because the built-in orange mask has already done most of the heavy lifting.

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Michael's concept is not tied to Pyro, and it's IMHO unfortunate, that he started his posting with Pyro. The same concept works very well with HQ and Ascorbic Acid, as shown further down. If N-3 contrast is still too high, then further reduction of secondary developer and/or development time should do the trick.

Most extreme N minus tricks don't work ideally for color neg masking because you get an enhanced belly in the curve. It was the main defect of old Pan Masking Film. Of course, you can do it this way; but there's a better option. It's different from Cibachrome masking, for those of you who might remember that, and required a higher contrast mask. With color neg contrast masking, you want the airplane steadily approaching the runway at a consistent very low angle. Get a dip in the film "curve" and you prematurely crash!

DREW WILEY said:

Most extreme N minus tricks don't work ideally for color neg masking because you get an enhanced belly in the curve. It was the main defect of old Pan Masking Film. Of course, you can do it this way; but there's a better option. It's different from Cibachrome masking, for those of you who might remember that, and required a higher contrast mask. With color neg contrast masking, you want the airplane steadily approaching the runway at a consistent very low angle.

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That's precisely what Michael's developer formula does - check the H&D curves he posted!

NO it doesn't. I already looked. It's certainly a usable tweak, but not ideal for color neg masking.

DREW WILEY said:

NO it doesn't. I already looked. It's certainly a usable tweak, but not ideal for color neg masking.

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If that set of H&D curves is not straight enough for masking, then I don't know what else you'd suggest.

I already did suggest. What you need to understand about color neg masking is that, according to the analogy I already gave, it's like power steering. You want just a little. I'm referring to contrast-reduction masks, and not contrast-increase masking which is a two-step procedure. If the curve gets increasing belly sag with increasing lower overall gamma, as most do, you hit the toe too soon. With chrome film, which is relatively contrasty, a more aggressive higher-gamma mask was generally needed. But with color neg film you already have an orange mask which does most of that; so any remaining contrast you need to rein in requires a rather subtle mask, yet ideally with a consistent straight line over the entire scope of the original color neg itself, which can be distinctly longer range than in the case of positive chromes. So with reference to what Michael posted - sure, you could go with that developer for learning purposes. And the masking results would probably be decent, just not ideal. That's all I was implying. Not many people have seriously tested this like I have.

DREW WILEY said:

I already did suggest. What you need to understand about color neg masking is that, according to the analogy I already gave, it's like power steering. You want just a little. I'm referring to contrast-reduction masks, and not contrast-increase masking which is a two-step procedure. If the curve gets increasing belly sag with increasing lower overall gamma, as most do, you hit the toe too soon.

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This belly curve you refer to is a common thing with highly dilute developers, which achieve their low contrast through developer exhaustion. Michael's developers are nothing like that, their H&D curves are extremely straight up until rather high densities - densities you should not encounter in a weak to moderate mask.

DREW WILEY said:

But with color neg film you already have an orange mask which does most of that; so any remaining contrast you need to rein in requires a rather subtle mask, yet ideally with a consistent straight line over the entire scope of the original color neg itself, which can be distinctly longer range than in the case of positive chromes.

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The orange mask of color negatives is not there to reduce contrast - and it won't. Contrast of C-41 film is typically kept in check through its embedded DIR couplers, which have no effect on orange mask.

DREW WILEY said:

So with reference to what Michael posted - sure, you could go with that developer for learning purposes. And the masking results would probably be decent, just not ideal. That's all I was implying. Not many people have seriously tested this like I have.

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I wonder whether your combo of dilute HC-110 plus restrainer gets as straight a characteristic curve as Michael's developers.

I have never done masking, and it's unlikely I ever will, so it's not up to me to state what works and what doesn't. I do know how to read characteristic curves, though, and Michael's posted H&D curves are as straight as it gets. If these developers don't do the job, then straight curves are not the shape needed for masking.

The orange mask, yes, along with the couplers (thank you), helps correct dye reproduction relative to the printing paper. This is, in fact, one of the functions of an unsharp silver mask too. The orange mask does it selectively. But that still amounts to a certain degree of heavy lifting. With a silver mask you can be either hue-neutral or selective. So from a PRACTICAL standpoint, you are only partially correct. I don't need to get into the technical aspects here. Analogies are sufficient. Now as per those densitometer plots, Michael's profile does have a sag as well as an extended toe. That will get worse at lower gamma. And for most color neg masking, you typically want an even lower gamma than what Michael has shown. Michael's curve is NOT, let me repeat, NOT as straight as they can get, even at low contrast, not even close. I am not guessing at any of this. The silver bullet shoots a lot straighter than old Pan Masking Film. It's what I've done for quite awhile. And here we're talking about masking in just its most elementary form. You can do a lot of things with masking. But I certainly wouldn't want to discourage
anyone from further experimenting with Michael's own interesting route.