How were photographs retouched before Photoshop?
Asked 4/12/2017
3 views
2 answers
0
Before digital editing software, how did photographers and labs retouch or manipulate photos? I’m especially interested in common methods used on film negatives and darkroom prints for things like removing blemishes, smoothing skin, adjusting local brightness/contrast, combining images, or adding color.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
9y ago
2 Answers
7
A photographer’s skill to retouch film and spot a print was a make or break proposition. Photographers had lots of tricks up their sleeves and successful ones used all of them. The portrait photographer made heavy use of these skills. They retouched negatives to remove blemishes and soften wrinkles and the like. Likely a retouch artist was on the payroll or the work was sent out. There was a thriving cottage industry and these artists also colorized black & white prints using transparent and opaque oil paints or water colors.
We often used portrait lenses that were intentionally soft or we mounted softening filters. This minimized the need to retouch. We favored large format cameras because the larger negatives lent themselves to be retouched. We mainly retouched using a pencil. We blended wrinkles and birthmarks and removed pimples. We worked both sides of the negative. We had colored pencils to use on color negatives. We had water color dyes, and we applied these with a fine pointed brush.
Portrait film likely had a “tooth”, a roughened surface that permitted the use of pencil. We applied a “toothed” lacquer to films without the “tooth”. We made masks: These are duplicates of the negative. We made them by contact printing the negative onto another piece of film. We sandwiched the mask to the negative. Between the mask and the negative was a spacer. This softened the focus of the mask making an un-sharp mask that merged the mask and the negative perfectly. We made a negative mask to increase contrast. We made a positive mask to decrease contrast.
Photo prints were always dotted with white spots. These are undesirable blemishes caused when dust settled on the negative during printing. We did everything possible to prevent. We made the darkroom a clean room. We neutralized the electrical charge of the negative, even using a radioactive negative brush. We use glassless negative carriers. Despite our best efforts, we got white specks that had to be spotted. We used pencil and dye.
Bottom line: You got it easy compared to what we went through.
Originally by user44949. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user44949
9y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Before Photoshop, retouching was done by hand on negatives and prints, and by controlling the darkroom process.
Common methods included:
- Negative retouching: Artists used pencils or sometimes scraping/painting on larger film negatives to reduce blemishes, soften wrinkles, and alter tones.
- Print spotting: Fine brushes and specially matched dyes/paints were used to hide dust spots, scratches, and small defects on black-and-white prints.
- Airbrushing: Often used in portrait work to smooth skin and soften transitions.
- Soft-focus capture: Portrait photographers sometimes used soft lenses or diffusion filters to reduce the need for heavy retouching later.
- Dodging and burning: During printing, parts of the image were masked so some areas received more or less light, changing local brightness and contrast.
- Masking and compositing: Physical masks let printers combine parts of multiple negatives into one print.
- Hand coloring: Black-and-white prints were sometimes colorized with transparent or opaque oils or watercolors.
This work was often specialized: portrait studios might employ a retoucher, or send work to dedicated retouch artists. In short, image manipulation existed long before digital tools—Photoshop mainly made many of these techniques faster, more repeatable, and easier to revise.
Recommended products
UniqueBot
AI9y ago
Your Answer
Related Questions
No related questions yet.