Negatives

There is an art to making digital and analogue negatives, working with negatives, and curves for alternative photographic processes. Learn and get inspired by different techniques.

The True Inverted Digital Negative

John Riches at TruNeg has a method using mathematics to fix the failure of the inverted image to make a workable negative. If nothing else, a great lesson in how…

Spikes in development – Problem and Solution

Removing the spikes in development is important, in order to work with better data and get more precise correction curves for the best linearization of our photographs. Paolo Saccheri has…

Digital negative printer settings

Paolo Saccheri shares settings used for making digital negatives and highlights the difference the software can make. Writer and graphics / Paolo Saccheri What printer settings should be used for…

Making large format negatives with X-ray film

Scott Wittenburg shares his experience of working with large format x-ray film photography and how he uses them as an inexpensive and fun way to create large-format negatives. Writer and…

F-SAP 1.33 Table f-stop exposure times

Writer and photography / Gerard Smeets Gerard Smeets shares with us a table with f-stop related exposure times between 1 and 64 minutes plus the manual for this table. The…

A simple negative registration method 

A simple, but effective OHP negative registration technique for gum printing. The method can be used for multiple pass single negative prints as well as CMYK negative prints.

When to use gray gamma 1.8 or 2.2 for digital negatives

Regardless of the workflow you use to make digital negatives, consistency is the key to achieving repeatable results. It’s worth questioning whether or not the original step wedge was made in gray gamma 1.8 or gray gamma 2.2.

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.

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”.

A Non-Silver Manual: Light-Resists without camera or computer

The chapter called “Light-Resists without camera or computer” 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”.

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.

Distressing Negatives

Excerpt from The Experimental Photography Workbook, 4th Edition.
Christina Z. Anderson describes four ways to creatively destroy your negatives, giving them a little extra bite.

Curve corner – Photoshop and Gimp curves for making digital negatives

A curve could be described as the representation of all the tones in an image, from highlights to shadows. Photoshop curves are a great tool for creating a balanced digital negative. They help you control the tonal values and contrast of an image or a negative. Now you can download ready-made curves here – or upload yours to share with others.

How to make a paper negative from a photograph

You have a photographic negative on paper, from, let’s say a pinhole camera. You want to use it to make cyanotype or other alt. procs, so it needs to be made more transparent… how do you do this?

Wet Contact Printing for Paper Negatives

If you’re in the darkroom and have just developed a negative image, from say a pinhole camera. You wonder how to turn it into a positive image. This an easy step-by-step to how.

How to make digital negatives

An easy way to make interesting negatives with the help of a computer. If you think Photoshop is too expensive – The Gimp is a cheaper program – it’s actually free.

Less is More

Ed Buffaloe explains how to make an enlarged negative for contact printing by reversal.