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?
Rewash and,big you are lucky, you will be able to start again.
very little other than accepting it as a lesson for next time
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.
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.
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.
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
Thanks for the pdf, Ralph. I plan to get a copy of your book some day.
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:
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
very little other than accepting it as a lesson for next time
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.
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