creative DARKROOM TECHNIQUES
Eastman Kodak Company, 1973, 292 pages
SBN 0-87985-075-2

This book is a reference manual that explains many creative methods of altering or enhancing photographic images in a traditional darkroom. Profusely illustrated, the book contains hundreds of photographs and many diagrams, but is relatively light on text and is easy to read.

As a practical guide for a modern photographer, this old book is limited in its usefulness. If you are editing photos digitally with a program like Photoshop, many of the techniques shown here will be easy to duplicate, and some, such as solarization, are likely already built into your editing program as a filter. But other techniques will be more difficult to duplicate digitally… and some might be impossible to duplicate.

If you are making prints in a traditional darkroom, the problem you'll run into is that many of the materials used in these techniques are now difficult to find, or simply unavailable.

The real value of this book today, however, is as an endless source of inspiration. Almost every page contains at least one example of a creatively altered image, and even if you can't (or don't want to) duplicate that technique exactly, it might well inspire you to try something similar.

Photographers who enjoy altering their images in creative ways may find this book interesting, even if its practical usefulness is limited.