Mask for prints with black border

[haris]

Hello,

I thought this could be used as gadget for making prints with black border:

Take glass exact size as paper size you would use. Paint glass lightproof exact size as image size you will make on that paper. Then leave glass unpainted around image area. Let say it would be 5mm. Next aroung unpainted glass area, paint again lightproof to the edges of glass. This way you will get painted inside area (retangle or square, depend of image you make), unpainted surrounding are, and again painted area surrounding unpainted area. Glass heavy enough to press paper flat. You can make base of wood thickess as you wish, let say 10 or 20 mm exact size as paper/glass. On 3 sides of that wooden base whole lenght, fix thin wooden sides so high as wooden base thickness and glass thickness. For example if wooden base is 20mm and glass is 5mm thick, sides should be 25mm high. Those sides will use as frame for paper and glass to be precisely on wooden base. It can even glass to be fixed on wooden base, so whole thing looks like contact sheet printer.

So, you expose your print, put paper on wooden base put glass over paper, raise enlarger head to light whole paper, expose enough to get pure black, then process your paper normally.

This way no need to fill your's enlarger negative carriers in order to get black border on your print.

So, painted glass should look like on first oicture, and wooden base with sides like on second picture (look from front side of base):

 

[ann]

one reason to file out the carrier is to create a border that is uneven.

there are a wide variety of ways to create a black border and this one seems to work for you.

 

[Bob Carnie]

If you use glass carrier you can then let the rebate print black and use the blades of the easel to make a clean black border if you wish.

 

[Neal]

Dear haris,

I think you might be able to get some nice effects that way. With a bit of effort, you could have a number of different patterns for your border.

Neal Wydra

 

[haris]

Hi people,

Yes, as you Neal said, and as ann pointed one of reasons for filling out negative carrier, possibilities are restricted only by imagination, what ever pattern one want, one can make. For example, why to paint sharp defined mask for strict border, one can make graded mask so border can fade in/fade out from image to border an vice versa...

This crossed my mind when thought why to fill out negative carrier for getting black border, this way one doesn't have to touch negative carrier and still make different borders on print. So, I looked at contact sheet printer and then thought why not to use same principle for border mask.

Just a thought...

Regards