Hand-colouring - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Hand-colouring refers to any method of manually adding colour to a black-and-white

Black-and-white

Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...

photograph

Photograph

A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...

, generally either to heighten the realism of the photograph or for artistic purposes. Hand-colouring is also known as hand painting or overpainting.

Typically, watercolours

Watercolor painting

Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...

, oils

Oil paint

Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...

, crayons or pastels, and other paint

Paint

Paint is any liquid, liquefiable, or mastic composition which after application to a substrate in a thin layer is converted to an opaque solid film. One may also consider the digital mimicry thereof...

s or dye

Dye

A dye is a colored substance that has an affinity to the substrate to which it is being applied. The dye is generally applied in an aqueous solution, and requires a mordant to improve the fastness of the dye on the fiber....

s are applied to the image surface using brush

Brush

A brush is a tool with bristles, wire or other filaments, used for cleaning, grooming hair, make up, painting, surface finishing and for many other purposes. It is one of the most basic and versatile tools known to mankind, and the average household may contain several dozen varieties...

es, fingers, cotton swab

Cotton swab

Cotton swabs or cotton buds or ear buds consist of a small wad of cotton wrapped around one or both ends of a short rod, usually made of either wood, rolled paper, or plastic...

s or airbrush

Airbrush

An airbrush is a small, air-operated tool that sprays various media including ink and dye, but most often paint by a process of nebulization. Spray guns developed from the airbrush and are still considered a type of airbrush.-History:...

es. Hand-coloured photographs were most popular in the mid- to late-19th century before the invention of colour photography

Color photography

Color photography is photography that uses media capable of representing colors, which are traditionally produced chemically during the photographic processing phase...

and some firms specialized in producing hand-coloured photographs.

Pre-1900

Until the mid-20th century, the majority of photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

was monochrome

Monochrome

Monochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...

(black and white), as was first exemplified by the daguerreotype

Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate....

and later by other photograph types including: calotype

Calotype

Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. The term calotype comes from the Greek for 'beautiful', and for 'impression'....

, ambrotype

Ambrotype

right|thumb|Many ambrotypes were made by unknown photographers, such as this American example of a small girl holding a flower, circa 1860. Because of their fragility ambrotypes were held in folding cases much like those used for [[daguerreotype]]s...

, tintype

Tintype

Tintype, also melainotype and ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a sheet of iron metal that is blackened by painting, lacquering or enamelling and is used as a support for a collodion photographic emulsion....

, albumen print

Albumen print

The albumen print, also called albumen silver print, was invented in 1850 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, and was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative...

and gelatin silver print

Gelatin-silver process

The gelatin silver process is the photographic process used with currently available black-and-white films and printing papers. A suspension of silver salts in gelatin is coated onto a support such as glass, flexible plastic or film, baryta paper, or resin-coated paper...

. In an attempt to create more realistic images, photographers and artists would hand-colour these various types of photographs. Some photographic processes also produced images with an inherent overall colour as, for example, the blue of cyanotype

Cyanotype

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that gives a cyan-blue print. The process was popular in engineering circles well into the 20th century. The simple and low-cost process enabled them to produce large-scale copies of their work, referred to as blueprints...

s.

The first hand-coloured daguerreotypes are attributed to Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

painter and printmaker Johann Baptist Isenring

Johann Baptist Isenring

Johann Baptist Isenring was a Swiss painter, printmaker and daguerreotypist. In 1840 or 1841 he produced the first coloured daguerreotype using a mixture of gum arabic and pigments. The coloured powder was fixed on the delicate surface of the daguerreotype by the application of heat...

, who used a mixture of gum arabic

Gum arabic

220px|thumb|right|Acacia gumGum arabic, also known as acacia gum, chaar gund, char goond, or meska, is a natural gum made of hardened sap taken from two species of the acacia tree; Acacia senegal and Acacia seyal...

and pigment

Pigment

A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light.Many materials selectively absorb...

s to colour daguerreotypes soon after their invention in 1839. Coloured powder was fixed on the delicate surface of the daguerreotype by the application of heat. Variations of this technique were patented in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

by Richard Beard in 1842 and in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

by Étienne Lecchi in 1842 and Léotard de Leuze in 1845. Later, hand-colouring was used with successive photographic innovations, from albumen and gelatin silver prints to lantern slides

Magic lantern

The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image projector developed in the 17th century.-Operation:The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture , and...

and transparency photography

Transparency (photography)

In photography, a reversal film is a type of photographic film that produces a positive image on a transparent base. Also known as dias or slide. The film is processed to produce transparencies or diapositives instead of negatives and prints...

.

Parallel efforts to produce coloured photographic images had an impact on the popularity of hand-colouring. In 1842 Daniel Davis Jr.

Daniel Davis Jr. (photographer)

Daniel Davis Jr. was an American photographer, daguerreotypist and ambrotypist.In 1842 Daniel Davis Jr. patented a method for colouring daguerreotypes through electroplating, and his work was refined by Warren Thompson the following year....

patented a method for colouring daguerreotypes through electroplating

Electroplating

Electroplating is a plating process in which metal ions in a solution are moved by an electric field to coat an electrode. The process uses electrical current to reduce cations of a desired material from a solution and coat a conductive object with a thin layer of the material, such as a metal...

, and his work was refined by Warren Thompson the following year. The results of the work of Davis and Thompson were only partially successful in creating colour photographs and the electroplating method was soon abandoned. In 1850 Levi L. Hill

Levi Hill

Levi Hill was an American minister in Upstate New York who claimed to have invented the first color photographic process in 1850. Hill called his process "Heliochromy", though the plates created became commonly referred to as "Hillotypes"...

announced his invention of a process of daguerreotyping in natural colours in his Treatise on Daguerreotype. Sales of conventional uncoloured and hand-coloured daguerreotypes fell in anticipation of this new technology. Hill delayed publication of the details of his process for several years, however, and his claims soon came to be considered fraudulent. When he finally did publish his treatise in 1856, the process – whether bona fide or not – was certainly impractical and dangerous.

Hand-colouring remained the easiest and most effective method to produce full-colour photographic images until the mid-20th century when American Kodak introduced Kodachrome

Kodachrome

Kodachrome is the trademarked brand name of a type of color reversal film that was manufactured by Eastman Kodak from 1935 to 2009.-Background:...

colour film.

Japanese hand-coloured photographs (circa 1860–1899)

Though the hand-colouring of photographs was introduced in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, the technique gained considerable popularity in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, where the practice became a respected and refined art form beginning in the 1860s. It is possible that photographer Charles Parker and his artist partner William Parke Andrew were the first to produce such works in Japan, but the first to consistently employ hand-colouring in the country were reporter and photographer Felice Beato

Felice Beato

Felice Beato , also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian–British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and...

andThe Illustrated London News artist and colourist Charles Wirgman

Charles Wirgman

Charles Wirgman was an English artist and cartoonist, the creator of the Japan Punch and illustrator in China and Meiji period Japan for the Illustrated London News....

. In Beato's studio the refined skills of Japanese

Japanese art

Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...

watercolourists

Watercolor painting

and woodblock printmakers

Woodblock printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper....

were successfully applied to European photography, as evidenced in Beato's volume of hand-coloured portraits, Native Types.

Another notable early photographer in Japan to use hand-colouring was Yokoyama Matsusaburō

Yokoyama Matsusaburo

was a pioneering Japanese photographer, artist, lithographer and teacher.Yokoyama was born Yokoyama Bunroku in Iturup on 10 October 1838. Early in his life, Yokoyama and his family moved to Hakodate, where in 1854 he was first exposed to photography on seeing daguerreotypes by Eliphalet Brown,...

. Yokoyama had trained as a painter and lithographer as well as a photographer, and he took advantage of his extensive repertoire of skills and techniques to create what he called shashin abura-e (写真油絵) or "photographic oil paintings", in which the paper support of a photograph was cut away and oil paints then applied to the remaining emulsion.

Later practitioners of hand-colouring in Japan included the firm of Stillfried & Andersen

Stillfried & Andersen

The firm of Stillfried & Andersen, also known as the Japan Photographic Association, was a photographic studio founded by Baron Raimund von Stillfried and Hermann Andersen that operated in Yokohama, Japan between 1876 and 1885. The studio is noted for its fine portraits and landscapes that were...

, which acquired Beato's studio in 1877 and hand-coloured many of his negatives in addition to its own. Austrian Baron Raimund von Stillfried und Ratenitz, trained Japanese photographer and colorist Kusakabe Kimbei

Kusakabe Kimbei

Kusakabe Kimbei was a Japanese photographer. He usually went by his given name, Kimbei, because his clientele, mostly non-Japanese-speaking foreign residents and visitors, found it easier to pronounce than his family name....

, and together they created hand-coloured images of Japanese daily life that were very popular as souvenirs. Hand-coloured photographs were also produced by Kusakabe Kimbei

Kusakabe Kimbei

, Tamamura Kozaburō

Tamamura Kozaburo

Tamamura Kozaburō was a Japanese photographer. In 1874 he opened a photographic studio in Asakusa, Tokyo and subsequently moved to Yokohama in 1883, opening his most successful studio. He was an originator of the Yokohama shashin photographic scene. His studio was still operating in...

, Adolfo Farsari

Adolfo Farsari

Adolfo Farsari was an Italian photographer based in Yokohama, Japan. Following a brief military career, including service in the American Civil War, he became a successful entrepreneur and commercial photographer...

, Uchida Kuichi

Uchida Kuichi

was a pioneering Japanese photographer from Nagasaki. He was greatly respected as a portrait photographer and was the only photographer granted a sitting to photograph the Emperor Meiji....

, Ogawa Kazumasa

Ogawa Kazumasa

, also known as Ogawa Kazuma or Ogawa Isshin, was a Japanese photographer, printer and publisher who was a pioneer in photomechanical printing and photography in the Meiji era.Ogawa was born in Saitama to the Matsudaira samurai clan...

and others. Many high-quality hand-coloured photographs continued to be made in Japan well into the 20th century.

Post-1900

The so-called golden age of hand-coloured photography in the western hemisphere occurred between 1900 and 1940. The increased demand for hand-coloured landscape photography at the beginning of the 20th century is attributed to the work of Wallace Nutting

Wallace Nutting

Wallace Nutting was a U.S. minister, photographer, artist, and antiquarian, who is most famous for his pictures. He also was an accomplished author, lecturer, furniture maker —some of whose reproductions pass as antiques— antiques expert and collector...

. Nutting, a New England minister, pursued hand-coloured landscape photography as a hobby until 1904, when he opened a professional studio. He spent the next 35 years creating hand-coloured photographs, and became the best-selling hand-coloured photographer of all time.

Between 1915 and 1925 hand-coloured photographs were popular among the middle classes in the United States, Canada, Bermuda and the Bahamas as affordable and stylish wedding gifts, shower gifts, holiday gifts, friendship gifts, and vacation souvenirs. With the start of the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

in 1929, and the subsequent decrease in the numbers of the middle class, sales of hand-coloured photographs sharply diminished.

Despite their downturn in popularity, skilled photographers continued to create beautifully hand-coloured photographs. Hans Bellmer's

Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer was a German artist, best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer.-Biography:...

hand-coloured photographs of his own doll sculptures from the 1930s provide an example of continued hand-colouring of photographs in Europe during this time. Another hand-colour photographer, Luis Márquez (1899–1978), was the official photographer for and art adviser of the Mexican Pavilion at the 1939-40 World’s Fair. In 1937 he presented Texas Governor James V. Allred a collection of hand-coloured photographs. The National Autonomous University of Mexico

National Autonomous University of Mexico

The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is a university in Mexico. UNAM was founded on 22 September 1910 by Justo Sierra as a liberal alternative to the Roman Catholic-sponsored Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (National Autonomous...

in Mexico City has an extensive Luis Márquez photographic archive, as does the University of Houston

University of Houston

The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...

in Texas.
By the 1950s, the availability of colour film all but stopped the production of hand-coloured photographs. The upsurge in popularity of antiques and collectibles in the 1960s, however, increased interest in hand-coloured photographs. Since about 1970 there has been something of a revival of hand-colouring, as seen in the work of such artist-photographers as Elizabeth Lennard, Jan Saudek

Jan Saudek

Jan Saudek is a Czech art photographer.- Life :Saudek's father was a Jew and the family was therefore persecuted by Germans. Many of his family members died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II. Jan and his brother Karel were held in a children's concentration camp located...

, Kathy Vargas

Kathy Vargas

Kathy Vargas is an American photographer.Kathy Vargas became interested in the hand-coloured photography around 1970...

, and Rita Dibert. Robert Rauschenberg's

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...

and others' use of combined photographic and painting media in their art represents a precursor to this revival.

In spite of the availability of high-quality colour processes

Color photography

Color photography is photography that uses media capable of representing colors, which are traditionally produced chemically during the photographic processing phase...

, hand-coloured photographs (often combined with sepia-toning) are still popular for aesthetic reasons and because the pigments used have great permanence. In many countries where colour film was rare or expensive, or where colour processing was unavailable, hand-colouring continued to be used and sometimes preferred into the 1980s. More recently, digital image processing

Digital image processing

Digital image processing is the use of computer algorithms to perform image processing on digital images. As a subcategory or field of digital signal processing, digital image processing has many advantages over analog image processing...

has been used – particularly in advertising – to recreate the appearance and effects of hand-colouring. Colourisation is now available to the amateur photographer using image manipulation software such as Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...

Dyes

Basic dyes are used in the hand-colouring of photographs. Dyes are soluble colour substance, either natural or synthetic, in an aqueous solution, as opposed to pigments which are generally insoluble colour substance in an aqueous solution. Aniline dyes, the first synthetically produced dyes originally used for the dyeing of textiles, were first used to dye albumen print

Albumen print

s and glass transparency

Transparency (photography)

photographs in Germany in the 1860s. When hand-colouring with dye

Dye

s, a weak solution

Solution

In chemistry, a solution is a homogeneous mixture composed of only one phase. In such a mixture, a solute is dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. The solvent does the dissolving.- Types of solutions :...

of dye in water is preferred, and colours are often built up with repeated washes rather than being applied all at once. The approach is to stain or dye the print rather than to paint it, as too much paint will obscure photographic details. Blotting paper is used to control the amount of dye on the surface by absorbing any excess.

Watercolours

Watercolour paint

Watercolor painting

has the virtue of being more permanent than dyes, but is less transparent and so more likely to obscure details. Hand-colouring with watercolours requires the use of a medium to prevent the colours from drying with a dull and lifeless finish. Before the paint can be applied, the surface of the print must be primed so that the colours are not repelled. This often includes prepping the print with a thin coating of shellac, then adding grit before colouring. Watercolour paint used in photographic hand-colouring consists of four ingredients: pigments (natural or synthetic), a binder (traditionally arabic gum), additives to improve plasticity (such as glycerine

Glycerol

Glycerol is a simple polyol compound. It is a colorless, odorless, viscous liquid that is widely used in pharmaceutical formulations. Glycerol has three hydroxyl groups that are responsible for its solubility in water and its hygroscopic nature. The glycerol backbone is central to all lipids...

), and a solvent to dilute the paint (i.e. water

Water

Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

) that evaporates when the paint dries. The paint is typically applied to prints using a soft brush. Watercolours often "leave a darker edge of color at the boundaries of the painted area." Since different pigments have varying degrees of transparency, the choice of colours must be considered carefully. More transparent pigments are preferred, since they ensure greater visibility of the photographic image.

Oils

Oil paint

contains particles of pigment applied using a drying oil

Drying oil

A drying oil is an oil that hardens to a tough, solid film after a period of exposure to air. The oil hardens through a chemical reaction in which the components crosslink by the action of oxygen . Drying oils are a key component of oil paint and some varnishes...

, such as linseed oil

Linseed oil

Linseed oil, also known as flaxseed oil, is a clear to yellowish oil obtained from the dried ripe seeds of the flax plant . The oil is obtained by cold pressing, sometimes followed by solvent extraction...

. The conventions and techniques of using oils

Oil paint

demands a knowledge of drawing

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

and painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, so it is often used in professional practice. When hand-colouring with oils, the approach is more often to use the photographic image simply as a base for a painted image. The ability to create accurate oil portraits using a photographic base lent itself to art crime, with some artists claiming to paint traditional oil portraits (for a higher price) when actually tracing a photograph base in oils. Therefore, the choice of oil colours is governed by the relative transparency of the pigments to allow for authentication of the photographic base. It is necessary to size

Sizing

Sizing or size is any one of numerous specific substances that is applied to or incorporated in other material, especially papers and textiles, to act as a protecting filler or glaze....

the print first to prevent absorption of the colours into the paper. In the past, photographic lantern

Magic lantern

slides were often coloured by the manufacturer, though sometimes by the user, with variable results. Usually, oil colours were used for such slides, though in the collodion

Collodion process

The collodion process is an early photographic process. It was introduced in the 1850s and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype. During the 1880s the collodion process, in turn, was largely replaced by gelatin dry...

era – from 1848 to the end of the 19th century – sometimes watercolours were used as well.

Crayons and pastels

The use of crayon

Crayon

A crayon is a stick of colored wax, charcoal, chalk, or other materials used for writing, coloring, drawing, and other methods of illustration. A crayon made of oiled chalk is called an oil pastel; when made of pigment with a dry binder, it is simply a pastel; both are popular media for color...

or pastel

Pastel

Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation....

sticks of ground pigments in various levels of saturation is also considered a highly skilled colourist's domain, as it requires knowledge of drawing techniques. Like oils, crayons and pastels generally obscure the original photograph, which produces portraits more akin to traditional paintings. Charcoal and coloured pencils are also used in hand-colouring of photographs and the terms crayon, pastel, charcoal, and pencil were often used interchangeably by colourists.

Hand-coloured photographs sometimes include the combined use of dyes, water-colours, oils, and other pigments to create varying effects on the printed image. Regardless of which medium is used, the main tools to apply colour are the brush and fingertip. Often the dabbing finger is covered to ensure that no fingerprints are left on the image.

Preservation and storage

In general, the preservation of hand-coloured photographs is similar to that of colour and monochrome photography. Optimal storage conditions include an environmentally controlled climate with low relative humidity

Relative humidity

Relative humidity is a term used to describe the amount of water vapor in a mixture of air and water vapor. It is defined as the partial pressure of water vapor in the air-water mixture, given as a percentage of the saturated vapor pressure under those conditions...

(approximately 30-40% RH), temperatures under 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius), and a low concentration of particulate pollution, such as sulfuric acid

Sulfuric acid

Sulfuric acid is a strong mineral acid with the molecular formula . Its historical name is oil of vitriol. Pure sulfuric acid is a highly corrosive, colorless, viscous liquid. The salts of sulfuric acid are called sulfates...

, nitric acid

Nitric acid

Nitric acid , also known as aqua fortis and spirit of nitre, is a highly corrosive and toxic strong acid.Colorless when pure, older samples tend to acquire a yellow cast due to the accumulation of oxides of nitrogen. If the solution contains more than 86% nitric acid, it is referred to as fuming...

, and ozone

Ozone

Ozone , or trioxygen, is a triatomic molecule, consisting of three oxygen atoms. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope...

. The storage area must also be clean and free of pests and mould

Mold

Molds are fungi that grow in the form of multicellular filaments called hyphae. Molds are not considered to be microbes but microscopic fungi that grow as single cells called yeasts...

. Because hand-coloured photographs, like colour photographs, are more sensitive to light and UV radiation, storage should be in a dark location. The storage area should be secure and monitored for internal threats – such as change in temperature or humidity due to HVAC

HVAC

HVAC refers to technology of indoor or automotive environmental comfort. HVAC system design is a major subdiscipline of mechanical engineering, based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer...

malfunction, as well as external threats, such as theft

Theft

In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...

or natural disaster

Natural disaster

A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard . It leads to financial, environmental or human losses...

. A disaster plan

Emergency management

Emergency management is the generic name of an interdisciplinary field dealing with the strategic organizational management processes used to protect critical assets of an organization from hazard risks that can cause events like disasters or catastrophes and to ensure the continuance of the...

should be created and maintained for all materials.

When handling cased photographs such as daguerreotypes, albumen print

Albumen print

s, and tintypes

Tintypes

Tintypes is a musical revue conceived by Mary Kyte with Mel Marvin and Gary Pearle.With its time frame set between the turn of the 20th century and the onset of World War I, this chamber piece with a cast of five provides a musical history lesson focusing on an exciting and tumultuous period in...

, especially ones that have been hand-coloured, caution is required. They are fragile and even minimal efforts to clean them can irreparably damage the image. Hand-coloured cased photographs should be stored horizontally, in a single layer, preferably faced down. Cases can be wrapped with alkaline

Alkalinity

Alkalinity or AT measures the ability of a solution to neutralize acids to the equivalence point of carbonate or bicarbonate. The alkalinity is equal to the stoichiometric sum of the bases in solution...

or buffered tissue paper. If the photograph has become separated from its case, a mat and backing board can be cut from alkaline buffered museum board. The mat is placed between the image and a newly cut glass plate while the backing board supports the image from behind. This "sandwich" is then sealed with Filmoplast tape. Commercial glass cleaners should not be used on new glass plates. Loose hand-coloured tintypes can be placed between mat boards. If bent, no attempt should be made to straighten them as this could cause the emulsion to crack and/or lift.

Ideally, all photographic prints should be stored horizontally, although prints under 11"x14" and on stable mounts can be safely stored vertically. Prints should also be stored away from light and water sources in acid-free

Acid-free paper

Acid-free paper is paper that has a neutral or basic pH . It can be made from any cellulose fiber as long as the active acid pulp is eliminated during processing. It is also lignin and sulfur free...

, lignin

Lignin

Lignin or lignen is a complex chemical compound most commonly derived from wood, and an integral part of the secondary cell walls of plants and some algae. The term was introduced in 1819 by de Candolle and is derived from the Latin word lignum, meaning wood...

-free boxes manufactured using International Organization for Standardization

International Organization for Standardization

The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...

(ISO) Standards 14523 and 10214. Storage materials should also pass the American National Standards Institute

American National Standards Institute

The American National Standards Institute is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international...

(ANSI) Photographic Activity Test

Photographic Activity Test

Photographic Activity Test is an ISO standard test detailed in ISO 18916:2007 . Previous versions of the standard were numbered ISO 14523:1999, however it was updated and renumbered in 2007....

(PAT), or similar standards, to ensure archival quality. If a photograph exhibits flaking or chipping emulsion it should not be stored in a plastic enclosure as static electricity could further damage the image. Clean cotton gloves should be worn when handling photographs to prevent skin oils and salts from damaging the surfaces.

In some cases it may be necessary to contact a professional conservator. In the United States, the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works

American Institute for Conservation

The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works supports the conservation professionals who preserve our cultural heritage...

(AIC) provides a Find a Conservator tool that helps identify local conservation services. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Conservation Register provides a similar tool that searches by specialization, business, and surname. To locate other conservation services internationally, Conservation OnLine (CoOL) Resources for Conservation Professionals provides a tool that searches by country.

Colouring materials

Dye

s and watercolours

Watercolor painting

require similar preservation measures when applied to hand-coloured photographs. Like the photographs themselves, watercolours and dyes applied by hand to photographs are susceptible to light damage and must be housed in dark storage or displayed under dim, indirect light. Common particulate pollutants can cause watercolour pigments to fade, but the paint surface can be cleaned by lightly dusting with a soft brush to remove dirt.

Oil paint was often applied to tintype

Tintype

s, daguerreotype

Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate....

s, and ambrotype

Ambrotype

s. As with all photographs, the materials respond negatively to direct light sources, which can cause pigments to fade and darken, and frequent changes in relative humidity

Relative humidity

and temperature

Temperature

Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...

, which can cause the oil paint to crack. For photographs with substantial damage, the expertise of a oil paintings conservator

Conservator (museum)

A conservator is a professional who works on the conservation of objects. Their work involves determining the structural stability of an object, addressing problems of chemical and physical deterioration, and performing corrective treatment based on an evaluation of the aesthetic, historic, and...

might be required for treatment.
Crayon

Crayon

and pastel

Pastel

hand-coloured photographs have a powdery surface which must be protected for preservation purposes. Historically, crayon and pastel coloured photographs were sold in a frame under a protective layer of glass, which was often successful in reducing the amount of handling and smudging of the photograph surface. Any conservation work on crayon or pastel colour-photographs must retain these original frames and original glass to maintain the authenticity and value of the object. If the photograph is separated from its original enclosure, it can be stored in an archival quality folder until it is framed or cased.

Auxiliary materials

In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, many commercially sold, hand-coloured photographs were packaged and framed for retail sale. Early 20th century hand-coloured photographs were often mounted on mat-board

Mat (picture framing)

In the picture framing industry, a mat is a thin, flat piece of paper-based material included within a picture frame, which serves as additional decoration and to perform several other, more practical functions, such as separating the art from the glass...

, placed behind a glass frame, and backed by wood panel slats, cardboard, or heavy paperboard. A backing sheet was often glued to the back of the mat-board. Unfortunately, the paper products produced and used during the late-19th and early-20th centuries are highly acidic and will cause yellowing, brittling and degradation of hand-coloured photographs. Metallic inclusions in the paper can also oxidize which may be the cause of foxing

Foxing

Foxing is a term describing the age-related spots and browning seen on vintage paper documents such as books, postage stamps, certificates, and so forth. The name may derive from the fox-like reddish-brown color of the stains, or the rust chemical ferric oxide which may be involved...

in paper materials. Wood panel slats will also off-gas causing further degradation of the photographs.

Simple conservation of these fragile materials can be carried out by the adventurous amateur. A hand-coloured photograph should be removed from the frame, retaining any original screws or nails holding the frame together. Wood panels, acidic cardboard slats, and acidic backing paper can be removed from the frame and mat-board and discarded, retaining any identifying information such as stamps or writing on the backing paper. The mat-board on which the photograph is mounted, even though acidic in nature, cannot be removed and replaced due to the intrinsic value of this original mounting. Often the artist's signature and the title of the photograph are inscribed on the mat-board. The best preservation method to promote limited degradation is to store the photograph in a dry environment with low temperature, low relative humidity, and low light. The hand-coloured photograph should be replaced in its original frame, held in place with archival quality acid-free paper

Acid-free paper

Acid-free paper is paper that has a neutral or basic pH . It can be made from any cellulose fiber as long as the active acid pulp is eliminated during processing. It is also lignin and sulfur free...

paperboard, and closed with the original nails or screws.

Related techniques

Hand-colouring should be distinguished from tinting, toning, retouching, and crystoleum.

Tinted photograph
Tinted photograph
Tinted photograph is a term used to refer to photographs produced on dyed printing papers produced by commercial manufacturers. A single overall colour underlies the image and is most apparent in the highlights and mid-tones. From the 1870s albumen printing papers were available in pale pink or...

s are made with dyed printing papers
Photographic paper
Photographic paper is paper coated with light-sensitive chemicals, used for making photographic prints.Photographic paper is exposed to light in a controlled manner, either by placing a negative in contact with the paper directly to produce a contact print, by using an enlarger in order to create a...

produced by commercial manufacturers. A single overall colour underlies the image and is most apparent in the highlights and mid-tones. From the 1870s albumen
Albumen print
The albumen print, also called albumen silver print, was invented in 1850 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, and was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative...

printing papers were available in pale pink or blue, and from the 1890s gelatin-silver printing-out papers in pale mauve or pink were available. There were other kinds of tinted papers as well. Over time such colouration often becomes very faded.

Toning
Photographic print toning
In photography, toning is a method of changing the color of black-and-white photographs. In analog photography, toning is a chemical process carried out on silver-based photographic prints. This darkroom process can not be done with a color photograph and although the black-and-white photograph is...

refers to a variety of methods for altering the overall colour of the photographic image itself. Compounds of gold, platinum or other metals are used in combination with variations in development time, temperature and other factors to produce a range of tones, including warm browns, purples, sepias, blues, olives, red-browns and blue-blacks. A well-known type of toning is sepia tone. Besides adding colour to a monochromatic print, toning often improves image stability and increases contrast.

Retouching uses many of the same tools and techniques as hand-colouring, but with the intent of covering damage, hiding unwanted features, accentuating details, or adding missing elements in a photographic print. In a portrait retouching could be used to improve a sitter's appearance, for instance, by removing facial blemishes, and in a landscape with an overexposed sky, clouds could be painted into the image. Water-colours, inks, dyes and chemical reducers are used with such tools as scalpel
Scalpel
A scalpel, or lancet, is a small and extremely sharp bladed instrument used for surgery, anatomical dissection, and various arts and crafts . Scalpels may be single-use disposable or re-usable. Re-usable scalpels can have attached, resharpenable blades or, more commonly, non-attached, replaceable...

s, pointed brushes, airbrushes and retouching pencils.

In addition, the crystoleum process was yet another method of applying colour to albumen prints. The print was pasted face down to the inside of a concave piece of glass. Once the adhesive (usually starch
Starch
Starch or amylum is a carbohydrate consisting of a large number of glucose units joined together by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by all green plants as an energy store...

paste or gelatin
Gelatin
Gelatin is a translucent, colorless, brittle , flavorless solid substance, derived from the collagen inside animals' skin and bones. It is commonly used as a gelling agent in food, pharmaceuticals, photography, and cosmetic manufacturing. Substances containing gelatin or functioning in a similar...

) was dry, the paper backing of the print was rubbed away, leaving only the transparent emulsion on the glass. The image was then coloured by hand. Another piece of glass was added to the back and this could also be coloured by hand. Both pieces of glass were bound together creating a detailed, albeit fragile, image.

Photographic collections

My Vintage Photos http://myvintagephotos.com/Vintage B&W photographs hand color-tinted to create new vibrant images of an era gone past. My Vintage Photos features imagery of Movie & Cultural Celebrities, Native American Indians, Civil War & Military, Famous Places & Landmarks, US Presidents & Political Figures, Scientists and Heroes & Outlaws of the American Old West. All hand colorized by Margaret A. Rogers, artist/ colorist using Marshall's Oil Tints dating back as early as the late 1800s...]
Brooklyn Museum Flickr Collection
The George Eastman House Flickr Collection
The Field Museum Flickr Collection
Nagasaki University Library; Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period.
The National Media Museum Flickr Collection
A collection of hand-colored photographs by Luis Marquez in the 1930s at the University of Houston Digital Library

Pre-1900

Japanese hand-coloured photographs (circa 1860–1899)

Post-1900

Dyes

Watercolours

Oils

Crayons and pastels

Preservation and storage

Colouring materials

Auxiliary materials

Related techniques

Photographic collections

See also

Further reading