التجفيف ومرحلة الإنجاز .. كيف تعالج الصور .. كتاب التصوير الضوئي

Drying and completion stage .. How to process photos .. Photography book

How to process photos
Drying and completion stage

The simplest way to dry photos is to leave them spread out for a few hours on a flat surface in a room with a normal temperature. For a better result, there is hot drying.

There are two types of photographic paper: paper that contains plastic and regular paper that does not contain plastic.
As for paper that contains plastic, it is treated in solutions in the same usual way, but it is washed faster and dries with hot air and gives a very beautiful surface.

As for paper that does not contain plastic, it is dried either on a flat polisher, a polisher or a rotary dryer. A flat polisher is inexpensive and can dry several photos at once in ten minutes. As for the rotary polisher, it is ideal for professional work: the photos are placed one after the other in the machine and they dry and are polished within two minutes.

To dry and polish photographs on a flat polisher, the photographs must be pressed with their sensitive surface against the polishing plate. For unpolished photographs, place the sensitive surface against a drying cloth. Rapid dryers for plastic-based paper dry photographs in thirty seconds by blowing hot air over the surface of the paper. Glossy plastic-based paper gives a polished photograph without placing the photograph on a smooth surface.

Initial retouching: No matter how much care we take to produce a good image, we cannot avoid sometimes the appearance of some defects on the surface of the images. If these spots are not important, you can hide them with a sharpened scraper or a black retoucher and two or three soft brushes. White spots are removed by filling the hole with black mixed with water to give the correct gray value. Large spots are filled with several successive touches with the tip of the brush saturated with the black retoucher. As for matte paper, use a well-sharpened HB pencil. As for black spots on a light background, remove them with the scraper and then fill the white with the brush and the black retoucher.

Using the scraper:
To remove a black spot, gently scratch the surface of the image and thus you will achieve a lightening of the image.

Re-sorting:
Apply the lightening black with a very soft brush. First lighten the most visible cuts.

Using the flat polisher:
There are several models of flat polishers used depending on the dimensions and number of images being processed. We can polish either a single image with lengths equal to the lengths of the drying plate or several images with smaller lengths placed side by side. When the images are placed and squeezed on the chrome plate, they are all covered with a very tight cloth. Electrical resistors sometimes run by the thermostat to provide the necessary heat for rapid drying.

Squeeze the image on the plate with the imaged side down to polish it or the imaged side up if you want to dry it without polishing.

Place the plate on the hot area.

Stretch the cloth over the images so that they remain stretched during the drying period.

Remove the cloth at the end of the process. The polished images should separate automatically from the plate.

Rotary dryer:
The professional rotary dryer has a cylindrical shaft made of chrome or stainless steel with a slow rotating movement. The cylinder remains in contact with the white cloth for two-thirds of its area to keep the images attached to it. Inside the cylinder column, electrical resistors begin to dry the images. Once they touch the smooth surface, there is a cloth head that allows the images to be arranged before they touch the cylinder. They remain in contact with the cylinder column, which rotates for about 90 seconds before emerging dry and polished. A system of brushes removes the images from the cylinder and they fall into a basket to receive them.