Bleach & Reduce

[lungovw]

I don't know why I have in my mind that a good print from a good neg should not call any retouch. But thinking twice I would ask myself why not? It can be seen just as part of the process. Then I got curious to know how frequent others use to grab the Potassium ferricyanide jar. So the question is:

Out of 10 different prints you make: in how many of those do you apply any kind of technique to reduce values?

[rippo]

'never' is still not shown as an answer.

i don't ever reduce. mostly because my printing skills have not evolved to that stage yet.

[David A. Goldfarb]

It's a tool in the bag, but I don't do it that often.

[Blueberrydesk]

I've finally got everything ready to go (I think) for my mini-bathroom/darkroom, and I'm excited to try everything. There was a great article in Photo-Techniques, I believe, a few years ago regarding printing techniques and bleaching to raise contrast locally. Ever since I read that I've dreamed at night of doing this myself! So while I haven't done it before, I see myself doing it a good bit, depending on the print.

[lungovw]

I realized too late that I did not include "NEVER" and I could not figure how to edit that part of the thread. I wrote to LF Forum. Let us wait and see if someone can fix it.

Sorry by that.

WL

[Ralph Barker]

Not quite never, but 0.1 would be close.

[Andrew O'Neill]

I often do local bleaching on a print. Didn't some famous photographer call it liquid light?

[Erich Hoeber]

I've got a jar of ferricyanide on the shelf, but I very rarely need it.

[Richard Wall]

Most of the time I never bleach a print, but I have had occasions when I get into split toning a series of prints. This requires bleaching the print then using a combination of mild sepia toning and then selenium toning. It requires a lot of finesse to do it well, but when successful the results are fantastic.

r.

[Mattg]

4/10

I've only recently discovered local bleaching and have found that it is an excellent tool in circumstances where you need to enhance highlight contrast.

I tend to use it in conjunction with pre-exposure for prints that include smallish areas of snow or that were taken in very hazy conditions. In both cases I now use a slightly longer exposure time to get good texture into the high values and then go back and apply in very small areas to give some white highlights which enhances the appearance of contrast.