PRINTS AND COLORING Among a certain class of customers there is an increasing demand for colored photographs, especially is this true with such lines as bicycles, juvenile automobiles, dishes, notions, candies, soda fountain supplies, . Joys, games, etc.
It is a wonderful help to a salesman to have photographs of his line. It is still more of a help to have that line in its real colors. Commercial photog raphers have been considerably bothered, for a number of years, to get this work done satisfactorily, cheaply and with a fair degree of speed.
In times past, for the above reason, undoubtedly, there have been only a few commercial photographers throughout the country who have done this work. Now, there are several in almost every large city, It is a profitable line of the business, attracts attention and creates new business wherever shown. There is nothing so really difficult about it, merely practice and patience.
For a line of goods to be colored, the negatives should be correctly made, that is, they should be made for color correction, and, in some cases, separation. Of course, the pioneers in this color game relied almost entirely on faking their negatives, but nowadays, the men who arc making a real success of colored photographs are using filters and panchromatic plates, when there is very little trouble in getting the goods to look right and, in consequence, the colors right. This is really important, this making of the negatives, for unless they are correctly made, there is trouble from the start.
Of course, there are times when even with panchromatic plates and filters, staining and all manner of faking will have to be resorted to, but this should be avoided as much as possible, as customers are very particular as to the colors, many articles being known by the colors, and a little off shade in the color, caused by an off shade in the print, is recognized instantly by the customer and by the trade buying the goods, and creates a suspicion in their minds.
Figure 82 is a straight print from negative that was made for coloring.
You will notice the candy hearts, in the upper right hand corner, are very nearly white in the high-lights, with the shadows a light gray. These are the old familiar red cinnamon hearts you used to eat in your childhood days. You will also notice, in the candy beans, the light yellow and red beans are practi cally white with gray shadows.
About the first requisite in a print needed for coloring is that there should be absolutely no color to it. By color, I mean green or olive tint, nor should they be a blue black—they should be black and white, but not too dark, nor quite as dark as you would carry them in case of prints not to be colored. They should be developed fully, but not over-developed.
Another point about the printing is, there should not be too much alum in the fixing bath to get the best results, and for easy coloring, the prints do not want to be hardened to excess, nor should they be fixed in an old fixing bath that has any tendency to scum or sediment.
If they are gloss prints, there should be no paraffins on the tins, as this sometimes causes crawling colors. If the prints to be colored are toned sepia, the scum should be removed from the print before it is dried, after coming from the sepia bath.
The colors and application thereof is where the real stunt conies in and trouble commences.
There has been a great deal of wondering and mystery in times past as to what these colors were and where obtained. The colors that are the more easily obtained and give fair results in small lots of coloring are what are known as Japanese or Velox Transparent Water Colors, obtainable at any stock house, and another and far cheaper way is to use common household dyes, such as the Diamond Dyes in the colors desired. In fact, practically any shade can be gotten from the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue.
Of course, there are many different ways of preparing these colors, bait, generally speaking, the simplest way is the best, dissolve in warm water, making a strong solution for stock colors.