Retouching digital paper prints?

I had a client bring a cherished 14 x 17 inch black and white portrait print today and asked my opinion on it. It left me thinking .. is it possible to retouch actual digital prints?

He was very coy about revealing any details. The print is framed behind anti-reflective glass and sealed and there are definite white dots against a black background of a portrait.

Studying the paper, it is not any silver gelatin kind of fibre based paper nor even resin looking paper. It looked like a stippled digital paper (does this exist?) and clearly inkjet with dots forming where the printer inkjet missed a bit here or there. The white unexposed to ink dots are very striking since the black background is very intense. As soon as I saw it was digital, it was clearly a dead end for retouching or spotting in the traditional way that I have been doing for years and I declined the work.

I fed back my findings to the client and told him the print wasn't worth the paper it was done on: it was very poorly printed. I suggested he open up the print to see if it was signed verso to locate the photographer. He paid a bit to frame it and thought that it was worth the risk touching it up.

I have no experience with retouching digital papers (especially stippled papers). Is it possible - or does it depend on the paper type and brand? Would the ink cartridge from which the digital print is printed, be useful to use to overlay/retouch?

Has anyone any experience with retouching digital black and white prints with traditional inkjet dyes and brushes (if we could even identify which inks and digital paper was used? I totally get that digital photographers can clone and swatch out dust and spots on monitor screens and reprint and many services offering this are a dime a dozen however retouching an actual print is quite distinct.

Kind regards
RJ

I agree it is a sloppy job for a digital print to have white spots on it. If it is in the file, it is very simple to clean up. If it came from the printer, something needs to be cleaned or repaired and reprinted. Not very professional. On the other hand, if you can spot an RC print (I've been told it's possible by others--I've never tried myself), you should be able to spot an inkjet print.

Pieter12 said:

On the other hand, if you can spot an RC print (I've been told it's possible by others--I've never tried myself), you should be able to spot an inkjet print.

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I don't think there is any gelatin on inkjet prints, so the materials you use for spotting RC prints may have to be substituted for.
And yes, Spot Tone retouching materials work fine on RC prints, particularly Spot Tone pens.
Do you have any local portrait photographers you can reach out to? If so, and they provide digital prints, they may very well have an answer.

Unless the print was made with black ink only (doubtful, but I sure made a lot of them back in the day) you shouldn't be seeing any dots.

Of course, its possible to do what you asked about, it just requires a lot of time and practice. More than it would be worth, vs just making another print w/ the changes made to the scanned file in PS. If you try to work w/ the paper itself, like a watercolor, every touch you make to the surface w/ a wet brush will probably be seen because you're changing the structure of the paper right there. It's a local change, not global, so it shows.

But again, w/ a lot of practice it could be done, but it just won't be that easy. You're only going to be able to make small changes, not big, overall changes. Every time you touch a wet brush to paper, no matter how small, it changes the paper at that spot. And a droplet of black/gray ink will have a hard, dark edge around it when it dries on white paper.

I wasn't sure if a new school of digital print retouching had evolved with digital techniques.

It's helpful confirmation for me to know that digital printing isn't as refined nor worth the effort like traditional silver gelatin printing. Trying to fix a digital photographer's inkjet surface squirting problems with traditional silver gelatin technique printing and retouching is a clear no brainer now. I have more clarity now if a client ever approaches with a digital print.

Many thanks.

I have a couple of dried-out bottles of Spotone. I found I could add a dropper of water and dissolve enough to spot with. I put a little walnut ink in one bottle along with the Spotone and use it for palladium-toned kallitypes. Works fine.