B&W Retouch

[feenej]

Does anybody have a good method for removing the dark areas under people's eyes (bags) on a b&w film portrait? Best to do it in the darkroom, or can you get some kind of paint to retouch the print itself? Are my monolights placed too high maybe?

 

[rogue_designer]

When making the print you can dodge them to bring up the tones.

Retouching negatives can be done, but it's helpful to use bigger negs, if it's small format, you're probably better off working on the print under the enlarger.

Or, scanning and bringing it into photoshop.

I sometimes use a low kick reflector to bounce some light into the eyes, that would help minimize that a bit. Too much starts to look ghoulish though, so tread carefully.

 

[David Goldfarb]

You could try to avoid them by increasing the fill or using a reflector.

Traditionally this would be done with pencil or dyes on the negative. If you are using a small neg and wanted to try neg retouching, you could make an enlarged neg for retouching by enlarging the neg onto a larger sheet of ortho film and contacting that interpositive to another sheet of ortho film to make the enlarged neg.