Lith printing
Lith printing is a traditional darkroom technique where you overexpose photographic paper then partially develop it in Lith developer. It produces prints with delicate highlights, soft midtones and dark contrasty shadows which are often grainy. Digital equivalent may lack some of the intricate tones but is much easier to replicate than the traditional method, where the results can vary widely. 1 Convert your color image to monochrome, then copy it and rename each layer one as highlights and the other shadow, making sure that the highlight layer is on top.
2 To make the highlights soft and defined, first make sure you have the highlight layer selected, then apply 'image>adjustment>curves' (rather than using an adjustment layer). Then drag the bottom left marker upwards which will lighten the shadow areas - about 90 seems to work quite well.
3 Now make the highlight layer invisible and select the shadow layer. Then apply 'image>adjustment>curves' and drag the top right marker to the left, this will wash out the highlights and midtones, again around 90 input seems to work well.
4 Applying the grain to the shadows comes next, using 'filters>artistic>film grain' and selecting the appropriate levels to achieve the amount of grain you wish.
5 We now need to add the warm colour to the highlights that are so typical of a traditional lith print. First select and make visible the highlights layer, then 'image>adjustment>hue/saturation'. Click on the colourise button and adjust both the hue and saturation to achieve the desired colour, about 25- 35 in both seems to be about right.
6 To finalise the lith print we must adjust the layer blend options to make the dark grainy shadows show through. We do this by changing the options to 'multiply'.
7 The finished lith print.
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