Making a Scene from Recent History

A case in point is the bromoil transfer, where the silver image of the original bromide print is replaced by printer's ink, producing a rich colour. It's quite a long and messy process but to a large extent we can replicate the final effect.

• This process needs to start with a black and white image.

• To take off a bit of the crispness of a sharp image, apply a small amount of Gaussian Blur, maybe .5 or 1 .

• In the Layers panel, duplicate the image by dragging it on to the Create a new layer icon.

• Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask and and give high settings for Amount and Radius.
  The larger the file, the higher the settings.

  The idea is to go beyond sharpness to give extra punch.

• Go to Filter > Texture > Grain.
  For Grain Type, choose Enlarged, then pus up the Intensity and Contrast to high values.

  The grain effect for Bromoil needs to be quite clumpy.

• Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise.
  Check the Uniform button and set Amount to 100%.

• Go to Edit > Fade Add Noise
  Drop Opacity down to 30% and set Mode to Lighten.

  With bromoil prints, a grain texture is noticeable in the midtones, but hardly shows in dark areas. Highlights tend to become rather bleached out.

• Go to Image > Mode > RGB Color;
  then click on Don't Flatten.

• Open Hue & Saturation with Ctrl + U / Cmd + U.
  This is to give the image a brown tone look.

  Check the Colorize box.
  Set Hue at 44 and Saturation at 35. OK.

• Reduce the Opacity of the top layer to 70%.

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