Bleaching Photos

Hi, I recently come across a website that suggested bleaching your prints for cool effects, has anyone done this and recommend this? What happens and is there anything I should be careful of? what are some good techniques to do this?

On B&W prints, to remove small areas of unwanted detail, or the ubiquitous black spots, I used Farmers Reducer - never tried it on a whole print, though. No idea for colour, however.

I don't know what you read and there are several ways you can bleach a print for different effects. I do what's called local bleaching.

 

Local bleaching is a wonderful technique that allows you to make subtle tonal adjustments that would otherwise be impossible. You can lighten shadow areas, brighten eyes and teeth (careful not to do too much, lest it be unnatural and obvious) and change the contrast of textured areas (the process is non-linear).

 

Basically you mix a small amount of potassium ferricyanide and water to a light yellow appearance. Working right in the fixer tray, you lift the print out and use a Q-Tip or cotton ball to gently rub the area you want to lighten. You immediately put the print back in the fixer, where the area will lighten as you rock the tray. You do this in several small stages so you don't overshoot. Yes, there's a knack to it. You should have a good bright print inspection light right over the fixer tray, 60W or so. Potassium ferricyanide has relatively low toxicity but will release cyanide gas if mixed with strong acid. Don't do that and don't consume it. The stuff is red-orange, not to be confused with potassium ferrocyanide, which is yellow.

 

Should be lots of info on the 'net. W. Eugene Smith, one of my favorites, was a master of the technique.

Potassium ferricyanide is the bleach of choice followed by the current bleach used when developing color film which is EDTA. In this instance, these bleaches convert metallic silver to a silver salt. The resulting salt of silver is now soluble in fixer. Do not use household (laundry) bleach.

Actually laundry bleach is very useful. It will strip emulsion right off anything! I use it to reclaim the glass from old glass plates that are fogged or otherwise useless.

What kind of 'cool effect' are you seeking ? If you can link to some examples, we may be able to give you more specific information.

has anyone done this and recommend this? What happens and is there anything I should be careful of?

Yes, been there and done that.

It's like retouching in negative. You can, for example, get rid of wrinkles on brows and under eyes, or double-chin shadows.

 

Using the reducer on a cotton-bud (Q-tip), it needs care and patience, and if you're using ferricyanide bleach, it takes ages to wash the yellow stain out of the paper again.

 

Doing the same in PhotoShop is much quicker and easier. Plus there's an Undo button!

 

Never tried a complete bleach/reducer 'dunk', but I imagine the effect is similar to just using a harder grade of paper and underexposing the print.

There are some toners that are two steps, the first being a bleach that converts,

as noted above, the silver metal to some silver compound.

 

The second step converts to, usually, silver sulfide, or

silver selenide.

 

For images not on paper, you can bleach them and still get a visible image.

For holograms on glass plates, the bleach step converts the black silver image

to a white image, which is easier to view.