You will need a good pin registration system*the best I used was the Stroseer system, Lith film and chemicals, Rubylith, Vacumn Contact easel, consistent dev for the lith film, NuArc exposing vacumn system with pins.
A very good light table,** this is the basics for Comp work**
When visualizing the masks you must always make the most domanint image mask first , or better stated the image that sits on top of all other images* then you work your way down by making each secondary mask . Once you have made all the secondary masks you will end up making the final mask which is a combination of all the above masks.
Once all the masks are perfect it is then a matter of putting the Images into the enlarger and positioning the projected image into its respective mask. you will need pin registration and vacumn at the easel side.
The above description is a very basic overview of how to make a projected photomontage which I can say I have done over a thousand of.
I will also say I will never make another one as the time, patience , headscratching,burning of the eyeballs throgh the loupes, that I endured learning this process was enough for a lifetime.
*we use to make cigarette ads from scratch, and I mean from scratch. the only source was a piece of paper and we would cut and paste and use pantone colours to manufacture the cigarette package and the butts sticking out , and then put behind the package any sort of sexy image that would convince the public to buy the smokes.* this was very time consuming and boring to do
If you want to cut and strip a few images with simple *Butt lines *then I would say go for it as it is totally feasable, and not knowing your end process, it may be totally possible with the right images the liquid to release the emulsion and the secondary overlay.
I'm old enough to remember stripping film. That was a series of graphic arts films where the emulsion could be removed from the base and transferred to another support. It was used for lateral reversal of halftone negatives. I remember seeing an expert strip a 10X12 negative from a film base and transfer it to a glass plate. These materials were in declining use in the 50s and were discontinued in the 60s.
Does anyone know anything about the structure of these films? In particular, how were they made so that the emulsion could be easily removed? I was thinking that some variation on this technique could be very useful in alternative process printing, especially for gum-like processes and carbon.
