Spotting
From Silvergrain Labs
Contents |
Spotting Solutions
Spotone by Retouch Methods
Spotone is a well known product line, made by Retouch Methods. However, this company went out of business in 2004. There are still supply in retail stores. These products come in sets of 3 or 6 bottles of different hues of black. You are supposed to blend those colors to match the hue of the image. The image hue varies depending on exposure, development, developer, toner, and sometimes drying method. So it's important to match the hue, although, for spotting small areas, you don't have to be excessively precise in matching the hue, because slight difference is indiscernible in small areas. Spotone solutions are taken with a small pipette to a watercolor palette, where the inks are blended and diluted with water, just like watercolor. Then the ink is applied with #000 sable brush or other appropriate means to the print.
Homemade Solutions
You can make your own spotting solution by grinding india ink very fine, dissolving it in water, and mixing a small amount of gum arabic. If the solution is to be kept for future use, add a small amount of preservative (biocides).
Spotting prints
Good working light is very important. Eyes are more sensitive to small steps of difference in shades of black when illumination is bright. It is useful to have a light stand or arm light with a fluorescent tube of 15 to 30W with flicker-free inverter power supply. It is also useful to have a good means of magnification. Optivisor with #7 or #10 lens is pretty handy, but may not be enough magnification for the most demanding work. For those, you might want to look for a used surgical (dissecting) microscope of 8x to 20x magnification, with good working distance, on a boomstand.
Another piece of necessity is a test paper. This must be the same paper as what the print was made with. It can be a test strip with lots of unexposed white area, if the strip is well processed. If there is no suitable material, take a 5x7 sheet of the paper and fix and wash. This will serve as a good test paper.
The method I found to work the best is to work from the light shades and move to the darker shades. This is because the water evaporates from the palette as well as the brush, so while working with lighter shades, everything is becoming dark, even if I work fairly quickly. When the print has a lot of spots, I may add a drop of water to the palette as needed. One common mistake is to leave a spot that is darker than surrounding. Lighter spots can be filled in a few times to match the shade, but once a spot is darkened too far, it is nearly impossible to lighten up. Therefore, it is always preferrable to use lighter shades to fill the spot in a number of repetition to match the shade.
Spots with sharp edges
Using a #000 sable brush, take a small amount of the blended ink, and make a dot on the test paper. Compare the shade with the target shade. Make sure that the shade is lighter than the target. Using tiny dots, fill in the area to be spotted. Do not spot on the area where the image is present; just fill in the white area. It's ok to leave small gap. Once dried, repeat this process until the shade matches with the surrounding.
Spots with fuzzy edges
Spots with fuzzy edges are usually small bright objects in the photograph. They are just as distracting as the dusts on the negative or negative carrier, and they may be filled in. However, I find it better to use significantly lighter shade to fill in from the center of the spot outward. Some overlap is ok, as the edge is fuzzy. After drying, repeat a few times, but with reduced overlap with the surrounding each time the spot is filled, until the shade is matched.
Spots in textured area
Spots in a textured area can be filled with a pattern matching to the texture, if the texture is large. But most small spots can be filled without any texture without being discernible. Unless the texture area is very dark (density above 1.2), match the lightest part of the texture when filling in. If the textured area is very dark, match somewhere between the lighter part and the darker part.
Other tips
- If you work very fast, or the print has only a few spots to fill, it's most efficient to use 2 or more brushes with different darkness of the ink. Always test first to make sure the ink is lighter than the target shade.
- If you print on RC, use semi-matte, pearl or matte. Glossy RC is not very easy to spot nicely.
- Don't try to make it too perfect. If you can barely see the spotted area in very bright working light, it's not visible in regular viewing condition. In particular, it is almost always better to leave spotted area slightly lighter than darker.
