Print Spotting

[jpreston]

OK, I'm a newbie to darkroom printing and even more green at print spotting. What can I do if I got too crazy with the Spotone and now my white spot is too dark?

 

[MattKing]

Rewash and,big you are lucky, you will be able to start again.

 

[Sirius Glass]

You may need to bleach with ferrocyanide.
http://jbhphoto.com/blog/2012/09/16/selective-bleaching/

 

[RalphLambrecht]

OK, I'm a newbie to darkroom printing and even more green at print spotting. What can I do if I got too crazy with the Spotone and now my white spot is too dark?

very little other than accepting it as a lesson for next time

 

[Bob Carnie]

Rewash the print and the work you did will come off and retry.

Spotting is an acquired skill and you need good light, very good brush with a good point, you need to charge your brush with spot tone and basically drop the tip of the brush to the surface and leave small deposits of tone on the area you want to fix. You should build up slowly , move around the area if its big and try to think pointillism by filling the area with more small dots that eventually join together and hide the area.

Trying to match the charge of toner to the area you want to fix and cleaning it up with one stroke of the brush is dangerous and hard to do, and probably what happened to you.
err on a softer approach with more dots.

Once you get the technique , its like riding a bike you never forget.

Big problem as you get older you start seeing to points of the brush and need to figure out which one to hit the hole with.

 

[jpreston]

Rewash and,big you are lucky, you will be able to start again.

Unfortunately, I already had the print mounted... It's a gift image, so I'll just have to print another and spot before mounting!

 

[jpreston]

very little other than accepting it as a lesson for next time

Thanks for the pdf, Ralph. I plan to get a copy of your book some day.

 

[Ian Grant]

Try dabbing it off with damp cotton wool, I seem to remember dilute solution of Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking Soda) helps. I've done this successfully with a dry-mounted print many years ago.

Ian

 

[jpreston]

Rewash the print and the work you did will come off and retry.

Spotting is an acquired skill and you need good light, very good brush with a good point, you need to charge your brush with spot tone and basically drop the tip of the brush to the surface and leave small deposits of tone on the area you want to fix. You should build up slowly , move around the area if its big and try to think pointillism by filling the area with more small dots that eventually join together and hide the area.

Trying to match the charge of toner to the area you want to fix and cleaning it up with one stroke of the brush is dangerous and hard to do, and probably what happened to you.
err on a softer approach with more dots.

Once you get the technique , its like riding a bike you never forget.

Big problem as you get older you start seeing to points of the brush and need to figure out which one to hit the hole with.

Bob, you are correct. I tried to paint instead of point. I have a few scrap prints to practice with and some old, O, 1 and 3 Spotone dyes. Going to try to reprint the image with, hopefully, less dust.

 

[jpreston]

Try dabbing it off with damp cotton wool, I seem to remember dilute solution of Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking Soda) helps. I've done this successfully with a dry-mounted print many years ago.

Ian

Ian, does it matter that it's fiber paper? It seems like the dye has been totally absorbed into the paper.

 

[Ian Grant]

Ian, does it matter that it's fiber paper? It seems like the dye has been totally absorbed into the paper.

The dye only goes into the emulsion, it doesn't pass through the Baryta layer to the paper base, fibre paper is OK once mounted as long as you just gently dab at the area. The Sodium Bicarbonate tip comes from the Spotone instructions I have somewhere, you can also use a dissolved Alka-Seltzer tablet.

I'd just tease at the area with the bicarbonate solution on a small fine paint brush then finally swab the area lightly a few times with cotton wool and a little water.

Ian

 

[RobC]

Big problem as you get older you start seeing to points of the brush and need to figure out which one to hit the hole with.

Yeah I have that problem. Just ordered some new glasses.

Mind you it does make looking at stars at night interesting as they are all binary pairs. The 20/20 vision astronomers don't know what they're missing.

 

[jpreston]

The dye only goes into the emulsion, it doesn't pass through the Baryta layer to the paper base, fibre paper is OK once mounted as long as you just gently dab at the area. The Sodium Bicarbonate tip comes from the Spotone instructions I have somewhere, you can also use a dissolved Alka-Seltzer tablet.

I'd just tease at the area with the bicarbonate solution on a small fine paint brush then finally swab the area lightly a few times with cotton wool and a little water.

Ian

I gave it a try and was able to reduce it enough that it will be acceptable as a gift. Thanks for the info!

Jeff

 

[Jim Jones]

Years ago I used Dr Ph Martin's inks for spotting B&W photographs when Spotone wasn't readily available. It seemed to work well. Start with the brush nearly dry and stipple carefully. It's better to have to apply the ink several times to build up density than to ever have to remove an excess.

 

[Ian Grant]

I gave it a try and was able to reduce it enough that it will be acceptable as a gift. Thanks for the info!

Jeff

No problem, it's what APUG is about

Ian

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Thanks for the pdf, Ralph. I plan to get a copy of your book some day.

thanks.I don't post free chapters as advertising but to help folks out.The book has now sold over 12,000 copies.So ,it was well worth the effort

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Yeah I have that problem. Just ordered some new glasses.

Mind you it does make looking at stars at night interesting as they are all binary pairs. The 20/20 vision astronomers don't know what they're missing.

So the Flamstead catalog is all wrong?!:alien:

 

[RobC]

So the Flamstead catalog is all wrong?!:alien:

It must be. I better start naming and submitting them for inclusion. :crazy:

 

[jpreston]

thanks.I don't post free chapters as advertising but to help folks out.The book has now sold over 12,000 copies.So ,it was well worth the effort

I'm sorry, Ralph. I wasn't suggesting that was your motivation. If it came across that way, it wasn't my intention.

 

[Sirius Glass]

very little other than accepting it as a lesson for next time

Ralph's book is well worth the investment. One of the best photography books I own.

No books were damaged in this posting and I do not get any commission from Ralph.

 

[MattKing]

And of course the other lesson to learned is that you should spot before dry mounting.

 

[Bill Burk]

Yeah I have that problem. Just ordered some new glasses.

Mind you it does make looking at stars at night interesting as they are all binary pairs. The 20/20 vision astronomers don't know what they're missing.

Haa - this is a time to be picky.

I went back and forth with my opthalmologist (I go to an overqualified optometrist)...

When I showed them how much I had to tilt the glasses to see straight... They built that tilt into the prescription. Next time we did a prism test and got that squared away. I think I still had to send them back for one more rework.

So pay attention to the pair they give you. If there's still double stars, or distant telephone poles... Send them back.

Once I got the prescription right, I was able to really lock into a single image.

 

[RobC]

Haa - this is a time to be picky.

I went back and forth with my opthalmologist (I go to an overqualified optometrist)...

When I showed them how much I had to tilt the glasses to see straight... They built that tilt into the prescription. Next time we did a prism test and got that squared away. I think I still had to send them back for one more rework.

So pay attention to the pair they give you. If there's still double stars, or distant telephone poles... Send them back.

Once I got the prescription right, I was able to really lock into a single image.

Looking at stars at night (without glasses) is a really good way to tell if you need an eye test. They should be very sharp and certainly not be elongated or seeing two (like I do). Tilting your head 90deg one way or the other is good becasue if a not quite round point of light rotates with the tilt of your head it tells you its your eyes that are wrong and not the star.

 

[Bill Burk]

I am always amazed that when you look at stars with a telescope, they don't look any bigger.

There's just more of them.