Books on Traditional Masking

[Fragomeni]

Hi all. Can anyone recommend any literature on traditional masking techniques? I've been working masking into my work but I've been unable to find many resources that describe and instruct on the traditional mask making and masking techniques. Any help would be very much appreciated.

P.S. I mean all kinds of masking i.e. mask making, different techniques for different results, masking for printing double negatives, contrast masking, etc.

[Paul Fitzgerald]

'Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques' magazine had printed many articles on masking techniques, have fun finding any for sale. They became 'Photo Techniques' magazine.

The old Kodak 'Data Books' for the printing industry had more than many techniques for masking of all types, have tons of fun finding any for sale.

Have fun with the hunt.

[seabird]

Lynn Radeka also sells a maskig kit that provides detail and "how-to" regarding various different masks used in monochrome work. Look here: http://www.maskingkits.com/

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Alan Ross is one of the best. He has kits, instructions and how to CD's available.

www.alanrossphotography.com

[bob carnie]

Ciba Chrome Masking is an old Ilford manual not sure if still available.

[Struan Gray]

I have been reading this:

Principles of color reproduction: applied to photomechanical reproduction, color photography and the ink, paper, and other related industries.
John A.C. Yule
Wiley, New York, 1967.

It sounds a bit obscure, but seems to have been a popular standard text since quite a few Swedish libraries have it, and there are copies on abebooks etc at reasonable prices.

It's out of date, of course, but explains clearly the purpose and science of masking. It won't give you usable recipes, but I found it very useful in explaining the background to masking, and other things. It has some very carefully prepared plates showing the effects of black and white and colour masks.

Struan

[Drew Wiley]

First of all, are you talking about masking for black-and-white printing or color? The
last person who did extensive training manuals was Bob Pace. Probably most people on
this forum never heard of him, but when an old video of his showed upon on EBay the
other day there was quite a bidding war for it, and I think some paid around $125,
even for badly out of date information. Virtually all the films have changed. Good condition punch and register gear also sells very fast for high prices ... so much for the
notion that Photoshop has made this kind of technique obsolete! And that's the first
thing you want to acquire - a good matched set consisting of registration film punch
and contact printing frame. But you can learn the basics in the meatime and try
post-registration over a lightbox. There are many, many different masking techniques.
Howard Bond used to give workshops on elementary unsharp black-and-white masking,
and some of his articles might still be floating around. And the folks who still make
punches for 4x5 film, already mentioned by others, can provide tutorials. For bigger
film you can sometimes get deals on both used and new equipment from graphics
supply houses (prepress).

[Drew Wiley]

(Got interrupted)... Books per se ... sometimes the old Kodak Graphic Arts guides give
useful information. They turn up from time to time in used book stores. Lith mask technique hasn't changed much, although you'd use something like Arista lith film instead of Kodalith. And for soft masking, instead of the long discontinued pan masking
film from Kodak, you can use FP4 or TMY in soft-working developers. In his book Postexposure, Ctein lists his developer called Muir Softshot for masking work with
TMX, although last time I spoke with him, he had switched over to a tweak of my masking formula.

[Fragomeni]

Thanks for all the input everyone! Keep it coming if there are any more recommendations.


First of all, are you talking about masking for black-and-white printing or color?
Good question, sorry I neglected to clarify this. I work exclusively in B&W but I am not limiting what I read to information specific to B&W. I often find that broadly related information can often contain useful information that I can use to extrapolate other information. But yes, B&W.


Alan Ross is one of the best. He has kits, instructions and how to CD's available.
I spoke with Alan earlier today and he sent me his articles in a download. Very nice man and the information is dead on what I've been looking for. If I can merge his techniques with some of the techniques I use for masking I might finally be able to achieve what I've been going for.

[Drew Wiley]

Masks can also be generated digitally, and you don't need as high-end a scan as
for digital printing per se; but you do need to be able to print on frosted mylar at
exactly 1:1 size ratio. But then you have to register the output manually. I think
traditional darkroom masking is much more straightforward. Alan's technique is a little
different than some others, but certainly worth learning.

[douglas gove]

ciba manual still available from ilford...technicalsupport@ilford.com...jean-noel.gex@ilford.com

[Brian Ellis]

I don't know if this has been mentioned but Alan Ross has an article on making masks digitally for use in a darkroom in the current issue of Photo Techniques magazine.

[Paul Fitzgerald]

Fragomeni,

"Good question, sorry I neglected to clarify this. I work exclusively in B&W but I am not limiting what I read to information specific to B&W. I often find that broadly related information can often contain useful information that I can use to extrapolate other information. But yes, B&W."

If you are working with variable contrast paper, you can try out 'dye masking', using yellow or magenta dye on mylar registered over the neg to change local contrast and add density.

Have fun with it all.

[bob carnie]

Drew , I actually remember Bob Pace, had all his books , I was doing Photo Comp during the same period, I thought some of his work was crude and some was excellent.I preferred Jerry Uselmann style .

We had a Lisle Camera , actually only a few made in the world to do multiple mask montages on 16x20 E6 for magazine , and 8x10 interneg, 6118 and 6121.
Now if you remember working with those materials you are good.

One of the most difficult close crop montage I ever did was 57 close cuts , one on top of each other... Canadian Runner Angela Isojenko, basically the Ontario Science Center set up a 60 yard dash with custom made backlight boxes, the comps I did were then made into Duratran backlights and Young kids would line up Press a button and race against Angela. the light boxes would fire off at her speed and needless to say none of the kids beat her.

I have forgotten most of the little tricks I learned, I screwed up my eyes looking into a light box with a thousands of and inch ruler.. I do not miss making comps by hand and today would be very hard pressed to make one.

But I have to say what is magical is the digital negatives through PS and separating out areas for multiple printing on different alt materials.. got hold of a strosser punch and am now applying basic simple registration work that was common stuff in the 80's.

If you are making comps now by hand I am really impressed.




First of all, are you talking about masking for black-and-white printing or color? The
last person who did extensive training manuals was Bob Pace. Probably most people on
this forum never heard of him, but when an old video of his showed upon on EBay the
other day there was quite a bidding war for it, and I think some paid around $125,
even for badly out of date information. Virtually all the films have changed. Good condition punch and register gear also sells very fast for high prices ... so much for the
notion that Photoshop has made this kind of technique obsolete! And that's the first
thing you want to acquire - a good matched set consisting of registration film punch
and contact printing frame. But you can learn the basics in the meatime and try
post-registration over a lightbox. There are many, many different masking techniques.
Howard Bond used to give workshops on elementary unsharp black-and-white masking,
and some of his articles might still be floating around. And the folks who still make
punches for 4x5 film, already mentioned by others, can provide tutorials. For bigger
film you can sometimes get deals on both used and new equipment from graphics
supply houses (prepress).

[kev curry]

''Way Beyond Monochrome'' has a good section on all kinds of mask making for B&W.

[Brian Ellis]

I had Bob Pace's book and also his video. They're what got me out of masking with color film. : - )

[Drew Wiley]

Bob - I don't know if what I do could be called comps. There are some instances when the masks have gotten pretty involved, but in many cases only one or two masks are adequate for color printing. Alas, today has turned very cold and wet, so
I won't be outdoors with the 8X10, but after breakfast I will be in the shop attaching a set of masking blades to my newly fabricated registration vacuum easel. I find PS work way worse on the eyes than darkroom tasks. Bob Pace's techniques per se are
more suggestive of technique than anything else - today we have different options.
The are quite a few ways to do masking. I rarely do it for b&w film anymore, since
the quality of the VS papers and the nature of pyro developer have so simplified
things; but for color printing it can be essential for quality results, and of course,
is integral to dye transfer printing.

[Fragomeni]

Masks can also be generated digitally, and you don't need as high-end a scan as
for digital printing per se; but you do need to be able to print on frosted mylar at
exactly 1:1 size ratio. But then you have to register the output manually. I think
traditional darkroom masking is much more straightforward. Alan's technique is a little
different than some others, but certainly worth learning.

Up to this point I've been making my masks digitally in PS but I've become increasingly more dissatisfied with that method. One of my common practices for a while was to digitize my cloud negatives so that I bad a database of them to pull from but I do most of my work in silver and digital negs just dont make the cut for silver so I stopped (I acknowledge how great they can be for alt processes but it's a different story for silver printing).
I like Alan Ross's masking techniques (the hand masking using pencil on matte mylar) because it makes use of old paper neg retouching techniques of using pencil on the back of the paper negs, a concept I'm familiar with.


'Way Beyond Monochrome'' has a good section on all kinds of mask making for B&W.

I actually just got a digital copy of the second edition today (on Kindle Mac which sucks by the way. Can't zoom in to clearly see many of the images and graphs.). Great book and a phenomenal wealth of information.