Shutterbug57

As 2018 comes to a close, what are the best retouching dyes available for B&W darkroom work? I appreciate the input of the group.

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

Marshall Retouching Dyes are as good as any, better than most. https://www.freestylephoto.biz/search?q=retouching+dyes

Goober Loc: Southeastern PA

I don’t know how other photographers retouched their B&W wet processed prints but I used watercolor paints with good success. I used a combination of black, grays and white carefully mixed on a 6x6 piece of flat clear glass. I placed the glass on a piece of clean white paper so I could judge my gray tones. I started out with a small spot of water on the glass and using a very small fine art brush, dipped into the inks applying a small drop of color into the water and mixed it to achieve the gray tone I needed to match the area I needed to retouch. I used this method for small dust spots and worked quite well even on RC papers and if I was careful with it the retouched area was difficult to detect.
I’m sure most will think this is pretty primitive but it worked for me. You might go on-line and check Blick Art Supply in Allentown, PA and see if they carry any retouching dyes.

Good Luck!

ORpilot Loc: Prineville, Or

The only thing I ever used was Spot Tone. I handled everything from Kodabromide, Agfa, Ilford, and several other papers. I still have my 4 little bottles from the 1970-80s. It just never seeems to run out.

Bipod

I assume the OP is referring to spotting (there are other kinds of retouching).

SpoTone was good, but no longer available. It was made by the Retouching Methods Co, Inc
of Chatham, NJ.

Marshall's Spot-All does the job. They come in at least five colors: Neutral black, blue black,
selenium brown, brown and olive.

Spot-All is manufactured by the American company BKA (Brandness-Kalt-Aetna), which also
took over manufacturing Edwal products in 2004 (from Falcon Safety Products).. The Spot-All
line is said to have been designed for both RC and fiber paper and tested extensively.

Other brand that is available, but less common, are Diaphoto and Fotospeed. Haven't tried them.

SpoTone turned out to be permanent (at least after 80 years = 2018 - 1938). Let's hope that SpotAll
will too. Time will tell.

The good news is that a bottle of spotting liquid still costs much less than a good brush.

It's worth buying a good, very fine, camel hair brush (or Kolinsky sable, if you do a lot of spotting
and can afford it). I use a humble syntehtic sable/real sable blend made by Winsor & Newton:
"Septre Gold II" round, size 000. It's a bit stiffer than real sable but holds the dye and keeps a good point.
Works for me.

ORpilot Loc: Prineville, Or

Nice to know the updated stuff.

Shutterbug57

Thanks y’all.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

At my studio we used the Spottone products- at the time they had the most complete sets of color dyes including some specialized pre-mixed colors for various skin tones and earth theses such a "burnt sienna, sky blue, foliage green" ect. The current lines of Marshall's retouching dyes seem to be of the same high quality but the colors are more basic, however, any color can be matched with a basic set. Successful results depend on your skill in mixing and matching colors and in the technique of building up the opacity in stages and not trying to fill in a spot or area in one pass of the brush. We retouched our color negatives with theses dyes and the fill in areas on the print when required.

Tip- Use distilled water, place the colors on a glass "palette", allow them to dry and then re-wet and mix from that pallette. Don't use "spit" or "sharpen" the brush in you mouth or lips. Some of those dyes are toxic and carcinogenic. Old retouchers have some of those bad habits and bad habits die (dye) hard and so do old retouchers.

We still have moth brands on our shelf but nowadays they are rarely used- just if we miss something on a final print on traditional paper.

User ID

See if you can find old bottles of Spot Tone
on ebey. Small bottles but lifetime supply if
all you use it for is dust specks.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

There is a complete NEVER USED set on Ebay now. Made by RETOUCH METHODS- just as good as Spottone- It's priced under $40. 1 Dozen assorted colors.

The are still in the original box. In closed bottles theses stuff rarely dries up and ones that were never used are not likely to be contaminated by folks who made the mistake of dipping a brush with another color directly into a bottle. Each bottle has a dropper.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

Have you used the burnt match mixed with water trick? Usually worked for me!

silver Loc: Santa Monica Ca.

You can find Spot tone on Ebay. If you are using cold tone paper Spot tone 3 is recommended. I own a silver B&W pro lab and I do a lot of retouching and I only use Spot tone.

patman1 Loc: Pataskala, Ohio

Boy are you bringing back memories. I started out as a retoucher/Illustrator, using an Airbrush, but I used a lot of Spotone and spit w Red Sable brushes, still alive. Thanks for the memories.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

My bad- I kinda skipped over the fact that the OP specified BLACK AND WHITE prints and I went on about color dyes.

Thing is, there are may image tones of black and white papers and paper/developer combinations and toners if used. Basically all that is needed for a neutral black and white paper is the various tones of black and gray. There are however, warmer and cooler variations where the othere colors come in handy, Some paper may even have an olive kinda tone. There are also many variations of toners. Even a single type of toner may have different effects on different papers and because of variations in the paper processing. Of course, all the colors can be used to spot or retouch color prints. If the price is right- the entire set on Ebay may be a good deal.

patman1 Loc: Pataskala, Ohio

I basically used No 3 gray and toned it down with water or built it up with multiple passes.