Photoshopping in the 1800s

[Tero]

http://www.lincolncollection.org/discov ... %E2%80%9D/

I know if you had a negative you could do a lot of stuff. But did they had negatives of just glass plates?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://www.lincolncollection.org/discov ... %E2%80%9D/

I know if you had a negative you could do a lot of stuff. But did they had negatives of just glass plates?

Glass plates were the only thing that could survive the film emulsion then, at least the only workable thing, gold doing a good job but a bit pricey.

They found a green house that was using hundreds of Matthew Brady glass negatives in its construction. The plates were discarded after Brady went bankrupt after the war. Some of them were saved, but most had gong beyond use.

[Tero]

But yet we have some useful pictures as old as..when in the 1800s?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But yet we have some useful pictures as old as..when in the 1800s?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... technology

1822 – Nicéphore Niépce takes the first fixed, permanent photograph, of an engraving of Pope Pius VII, using a non-lens contact-printing "heliographic process", but it was destroyed later; the earliest surviving example is from 1825.[1]

[Pappa]

It looks to me like the image has just been 'dodged' in the darkroom.

[Thinking Aloud]

Of course, in those days, it took a while to expose a plate, so there might have been options to move someone into or out of shot during the exposure.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Of course, in those days, it took a while to expose a plate, so there might have been options to move someone into or out of shot during the exposure.

You could wave your hand around a certain area, or use a "lollipop" to fade a spot. You could use a mask to bring out spots. I've done this in darkroom-equipped caravan.

[Pappa]

Of course, in those days, it took a while to expose a plate, so there might have been options to move someone into or out of shot during the exposure.

That sounds the most plausible.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Double exposure would work for the OP. Plus Mary Todd Lincoln was a spiritualist, holding seances to try to contact her dead son, and then also her dead husband. People would take advantage of her. And she was a marketable item after she died, of course.

[Tero]

If the picture was after 1870, the gelatin based film was available. It looks like staged activity in the picture, not during development. But then she would have known about it. Who knows.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If the picture was after 1870, the gelatin based film was available. It looks like staged activity in the picture, not during development. But then she would have known about it. Who knows.

After a quick perusal I'd say they put a picture of Abe behind her briefly (light shined on it for a brief period during exposure?) and sketched in the rest somehow. You could put cut-out on the paper during the exposure to wash those places out.