Image manipulation pre-photoshop

Photo editing before photoshop included a wide range of techniques such as :

• Airbrushing
• paint
• double exposure (taking two or more pictures on a single negative)

Double exposure was used to produce a unique type of photographs for example in this case headless men and women. They would use two negatives in this case to create the first image of the background and scrap out the head and place another negative over the top to make it be perceived that the head is somewhere else.

• overlaying separate images
• dye transfer
• different contrast papers
• coloured lights used in the enlarger
• dodging (stopping light reaching an area of paper to make it lighter)
• burning (increasing light reaching an area of the paper to make it darker)
• combination printing (producing a single print from elements of two or more negatives)
• photomontage
• retouching on the negative or the print

Below is an example of how to smoothen the skin on somebody. You can do this through the retouching machine which will vibrate the negatives allowing you to manually paint away blemishes, freckles and fine lines, as you can see this is what has been applied to the shown image below.