The advance of photography : its history and modern applications (1911)

HISTORICAL SURVEY 29 departure from nature, and was often inaccurate bygiving too much prominence to accessories. In the first period of photography these departures were overlooked. Everyone was content to possess a portrait which at least showed the outlines correctly ; and what was defective in the negative it was sought to remedy by retouching the positive. But this made the pictures dear ; and as it began to be the custom to order pictures by the dozen, the endeavour was made to evade this labour, which had to be applied to each individual picture, by carrying it out in the negative. A single retouched negative gave any number of corrected prints which did not require to be retouched, and thus retouching negatives became the first and most important operation in producing a faithful and agreeable picture. The essential characteristic of this operation consists in entirely covering many parts. For example, the freckles and warts which are white in the negative are entirely removed by a pencil, or by spots of Indian ink. Other parts — for example, the ill-defined details of the hair — are brought out by pencil strokes. Many hard shadows, such as the wrinkles in the face, are softened off by slight touches of Indian ink. It must be constantly borne in mind during this operation that all the dark lines which the painter draws on the negative will appear light in the positive. It is requisite, therefore, for successful retouching to know how to use the pencil and brush so as to produce the desired effect in the positive. The best draughtsman or painter is therefore far from being qualified for retouching a negative. It is to be remarked that the negative retouch may, under certain circumstances, go too far. Printing-out Paper. — In these early days the printingout paper had to be made by those wishing to use it. The method of doing this was as follows : —