bromoil process - Method

A method of making photographic prints in which the silver image formed by original development is bleached out, and an oil-pigment ink manually applied with a brush to the corresponding gelatine areas. The linked image may be in any colour, and can be transferred by pressure to another support sheet.

The Bromoil Process was an early photographic process that was very popular with the Pictorialists during the first half of the twentieth century. The soft, paint-like qualities of the prints are very typical for this genre, and have recently led to some art photographers using the process again.

The bromoil process was based on the oil print, whose origins go back to the mid-nineteenth century. A drawback of oil prints was that the gelatin used was too slow to permit an enlarger to be used, so that negatives had to be the same dimensions as the positives. Rawlins published a 1904 article on the oil print process, E.J. Wall in 1907 described theoretically how it should be possible to use a smaller negative in an enlarger to produce a silver bromide positive, which should then be bleached and hardened, to be inked afterwards as in the oil process.

Method

To explain the bromoil process, it is helpful to look at the oil print first. The prints are made on paper with a thick gelatin layer that has been sensitized with dichromate salts. The non-hardened parts absorb relatively more water than the hardened parts, so after sponge-drying the print, while still moist, one can apply a lithographic ink to the oil-base. The non-mixing character of oil and water results in a colouring of the exposed parts of the print, creating a positive image.

Bromoil prints are a direct variety of this process: One starts with a normally developed print on a silver bromide paper which is then chemically bleached and hardened. This print can then be inked like the oil print.

Long-term effects on stability:

Inadequate rinsing of the chrome salts can lead to discolouration of the prints under influence of light in the longer term.

This technique was used to produce color prints into the 1930s before the color-film was developed: Three identical black &