Digital contrast masks for colour printing...? Yeah!

Interesting work...good for you!

 

It would be interesting to see comparison prints, if possible.

Terry S

 

My thoughts exactly, Terry but you've beaten me to it

pentaxuser

 

Thanks for the before and after and the attempt to reproduce the original if there had been no dodge at all. IMO all of the "prints" are OK i.e. can stand on their own merits and each has some pluses and minuses. What stands out to my eye and becomes my focal point is the house and this is better in the original print and dodged print. It has lost a little in the masked version( has less impact due to lower contrast). Somehow slightly softer in looks but other areas have gained detail which is harder to see in the original.

If this print were to be reproduced several times then the time to make the mask might be offset against the time taken to dodge each print and of course it avoids referring to the "map" of dodging each time. The mask certainly wins in terms of ease of use and reproducibility

There may be a way of masking that makes the house standout as much as in the original but still increases detail in other areas and if so I'd be interested in hearing from others who have done this

Overall you have done well and I can imagine negatives where masking might well bring about much bigger benefits than in this negative. You have found a "tool" that is worth further exploration.

Well done

pentaxuser

 

Thanks for your reply. As you say each person has a different view and if the mask has made the print look as you want it to be that is all that counts.

pentaxuser

 

Congratulations on your success. But that particular technique has been around quite awhile. I still feel that doing it the old-fashioned way using real film and a
punch and register system is far more precise in a number of ways. But if this is how you like to do things, great! Incidentally, masks are capable of efficiently doing a lot more things in color printing than just automated dodging and burning.

 

Colour correction/ alterations to quite significant extents & saturation adjustments too. Look up how it was done for dye transfer & colour separation printing.

 

Have a look at Ctein's book, "Post Exposure..." presumably still available for free d/l from his website. From roughly page 100 or so.

Astronomer David Malin used USM extensively in astronomical photos to bring huge brightness ranges on a useful range. There used to be a lot of information on the internet, but I think that most of it is now gone. But probably a lot of before and after images of galaxies, etc., are still up.

As a note, you don't generally have to punch your actual negative; you can tape a strip of film to it, and put the registration punches in that.

 

What halfaman has been able to do is produce a slightly fuzzy B&W scan which has had the desired effect and align it by hand to get the desired effect. I had always thought that the mask had to be sharp or certainly sharper than his mask is and alignment by hand was courting trouble but based on his prints none of this seems to be the case.

Was he lucky or do we need to question whether we make masking more difficult than it needs be?

pentaxuser

 

It is, by definition, an unsharp mask.
Exactly what one needs.
Question to the OP - how is the mask oriented to the negative? In particular, do you have the ink in contact with the negative's emulsion, ink separated from the negative's emulsion by the film substrate or ink separated from the negative's emulsion by both the film substrate and the mask's substrate?

 

You can register by eye over a light box if you are just trying to learn the ropes, and if your masks are quite unsharp. 35mm film can be registered by aligning the sprocket holes. Serious or repetitive work requires a punch and matching pin glass. Film punches make tiny holes close to the edge of the film. Small film sizes can be taped to a strip of sheet film for this task, so avoid holes entirely. "Estar"-based sheet film should always be used for its flatness and dimensional stability.
Both FP4 and TMX100 are excellent masking films; and highly dilute HC-110 is a good developer (just the basics at the moment, no details). A 5-mil piece of mylar, frosted on both sides, is generally used in between, with the two emulsions facing each other. The degree of diffusion can be adjusted by the softness of the sheet - all the way from tight enhancement of edge effect (something PS mimicked) to broad diffusion. Andf just like in shooting nature, you can used black and white contrast filters to alter how hues are either emphasized or de-emphasized in relation to lighter vs darker. This is easier to learn with slides than color neg film. Often with color negs you need an extra step - a crisp contact-printed b&w interpositive to generate an unsharp CONTRAST INCREASE MASK. Otherwise, if you do it one-step, you get a CONTRAST REDUCTION MASK. That's enough for now. But already it's a way way bigger tool kit than most darkroom color printers have.

 

So you are exposing with the negative's emulsion facing toward the light source, not the paper?
Do you not end up with a mirrored image in the print?

 

One more advantage of traditional punch and film technique. There are numerous masking applications where it is necessary to flip one film or another, like the double-neg interpositive to interneg mask trick I described. A linear punch makes this quite precise and intuitive. Multiple masks? No problem. All can be easily registered. You see, "unsharp" is a relative term. Ideally, you want to be able to precisely control the degree of that too. For some types of masks, like lith highlight masks, you want a very tight correspondence with tiny little bits of sparkle and specular reflection in the original, so no diffuse unsharpness at all. Aligning that kind of thing to your original can be tedious nerve-wracking without a punch system.

 

Whenever I print a negative, I almost always employ an unsharp mask. Usually made with some copy film that I have, or even xray film. I have never used a digital unsharp mask, but I have made dodge/burn masks digitally. I use them sometimes for alt printing in-camera negatives. They work great.

 

The bigger the film is, the easier masking becomes. But alas, the more expensive the film becomes. I don't shoot anything larger than 8x10, but that's ornery enough in price. Its hard to find matched sets of film punches and masking contact frames with the necessary pins; but they do turn up from time to time. Or someone with machine shop skills could make their own. I still have my original custom-order Condit equipment. Masking was routine for Cibachrome printing. But I do it about half
the time with color negs, and once in awhile for black and white images. I find that kind of darkroom work fun. There are just so many creative ways to do it. Simple masks can even be made using pencil smudge or India ink right on the frosted mylar. The hardest part is simply getting every speck of dust off glass and film repetitively. But doing it manually isn't any worse in my opinion than having to do the clean-up afterwards in PS. Meticulous cleanliness is invaluable either way.
Pan film is necessary for color image masking. But even in b&w printing I find it much easier to control than ortho-litho film.
No need to have a registered neg carrier for masking work. The final printing mask is simply taped in register to the original
shot for printing, then into an ordinary glass carrier (glass both sides, preferably both anti-newton).

 

Just be certain the tape itself is very thin dimensionally-stable mylar, and not ordinary acetate. Once registered, I press the two sheet of film flat together with a simple smooth Bondo applicator while gently applying the tape edge to edge before pressing it firmly down. Durst punches are almost impossible to find, and
require large strips of attached film with big holes. I do have registered carriers for both my 5x7 and 8x10 Durst enlargers, matched to my Condit system; but this is for sake of serial color separation work, like in dye transfer printing, or hypothetically, serial tricolor enlargement onto color RA4 paper. No need for that kind of fancy carrier at all in ordinary color printing.