"New Coceine" opaque masking paint substitute?

[cyrus]

Another cool trick for all you big negative printers making a edition of difficult image.

put your negative into the enlarger , make a print where you are aiming for the upper mid tone to highlight regions, Your shadows will be too deep.

Take the carrier out of the enlarger and put it over a light box.
now with scizzors and diffusion material cut out the shape of the shadow region.
lay this carefully down on the glass, then cut out the same shape and lay on top.
much like contour mapping you can over time build up enough dodging for the shadows in each area, by laying more contour tissue on each area or removing.
After a few tests you should be able to make a straight print with all your dodging done exactly the same way each time, and all you have to do is concentrate on the burn.

This was described in one of my 60's darkroom books and I thought it pretty good trick.. Contour Dodging.

Cool! There should be a thread just on such tricks. I am trying to find more old books on darkroom tricks. Some of the ones I've learned so far: using Rubylith as dodging as well as masking, using the below-lens red filter holder for combination printing, and using pieces cut from VC filters to increase/decrease contrast on specific areas of a print whilst exposing (I like a touch of really high contrast on the eyes in portraits - makes them stand out.) I also started using small clamps attached to the ends of flexible gooseneck tubing as "third hands" (or fourth hands) for holding things whilst dodging/burning in.

I'm now experimenting using tone separations to make masks. Unfortunately I'm finding it hard to locate some of the material that the old books mention particularly the films for making positives and internegs. Seems like Arista APHS is all we have nowdays. I also lack an 8x10 pin register which makes things hard and slow.

Jerry N. Uelsmann apparently uses multiple enlargers to make combination prints - I'd like to try that out one day too but am trying to figure out a way to keep the image aligned with the different negatives as you move it from one enlarger to another.

[cyrus]

I should mention that there's really no reason why any of these tricks have to be used for "difficult images" - it is a lot of fun just to screw around with various effects. That's photography too. You can "build" an image using the enlarger and instead of just "taking" an image using the camera shutter and then printing it "straight" (albeit with some dodging and burning in where needed.) In fact I'm thinking enlarging drawings on acetate, and skip using negatives - or sandwiching negatives with hand-drawn images on acetate. Shits and giggles.