Category: Negatives

Making digital and analogue negatives, working with negatives, and curves.

Digital negatives

A three step method for making digital negatives by Ron Reeder and Christina Z. Anderson, an excerpt from Gum Printing and Other Amazing Contact Printing Processes.

8 bit step wedge

Download the 8 bit step wedge free here to go with the digital negative system in Christina Z. Anderson’s book “Gum Printing and Other AMAZING Contact Printing Processes”.

Experimental Photography Workbook

Experimental Photography Workbook by Christina Z. Anderson, 6th edition.

A Non-Silver Manual: Desktop negatives

The chapter called “Desktop negatives” of Sarah Van Keuren’s book “A Non-Silver Manual: Cyanotype, Vandyke Brown, Palladium & Gum Bichromate with instructions for making light-resists including pinhole photography”, written by Sandra C. Davis.

A Non-Silver Manual: Enlarged negatives

The chapter called “Enlarged negatives” of Sarah Van Keuren’s book “A Non-Silver Manual: Cyanotype, Vandyke Brown, Palladium & Gum Bichromate with instructions for making light-resists including pinhole photography”.

Gum and negatives with a twist of Français

Peter J. Blackburn shows how variables in gum printing can alter the desired outcome of your negatives.

Light-resists without camera or computer

An extract from Sarah’s book A Non-Silver Manual.

Pyro, digital negatives and alternative processes

Alex Tymków outlines a method of combining pyro, digital negs and alt. proc.

Glossary and explanations for Digital Negatives

Starting out with making digital negatives you may come across some terms you’ve never seen before, like "gamut", "ppi" and "random dots". This glossary may make a little more sense of it all.

Digital Negatives: The Color Ratio Method

There are several different ways of making a digital negative, but all seem to involve a Photoshop curve at some point. In this article geologist Clay Harmon applies his skills to photography and has developed his own curve for a Pyro-like digital negative – to be used with an Epson 2200, but, it can also be tweaked for other printers. All free to download here.