Tutorial: Citra-Solv Photocopy Transfer

The work I do as a mother involves a lot of delayed gratification. When I escape to the studio and put on my artist's hat it can be nice to see some instant results. Solvent photocopy transfer is one of my favorites. You need only a photocopy, fabric,  Citra-Solve®, and a few seconds of elbow grease - and VIOLA!

Citra-Solv transfer by Lyric Montgomery Kinard

The good people who produce this environmentally friendly cleaning product have included an ARTISTS' PAGE on their website. I'm honored to have been included among other textile artists I admire such as Jane Davila and Jane Dunnewold.

I encourage you to take a peek over there - lots of interesting things being done. It makes me think that I have some experimenting to do. Dissolving pages from National Geographic magazine? Hmmm. Wonder how I can do that on fabric.

Want to join me in a little playtime? Here are the instructions for moving the ink from a photocopy onto paper or fabric. Wear gloves and work in a well ventilated area. The stuff is much more pleasant than the paint stripper I used to use but it IS still a solvent.

dragonfly transfered onto rice paper
adhered to book cover with gel medium

Materials:

• Citra-Solve®  (find where to buy it here)
• Cotton ball
• Metal spoon
• Non-porous smooth surface
• Masking tape
• Fabric or paper of your choice
• Photocopy

Directions:

1. Find a copyright free black and white image. I love to use vintage family photos.

2. Make a photocopy of the photo, sizing it no larger than 5" x 7".

3. Cut away the background if it detracts from or competes with your image. (You can alter the image digitally too - see the Tutorial link above for PSE help.)

4. Draw in any lines that need emphasis or add in some fun scribbles. Maybe Grandma always wanted a tiara or your puppy looks great in polka dots! You can digitally manipulate the photo as well.

5. Make a final photocopy. (Note: Inkjet prints DO NOT work with this method. Laser printers might.)

6. Tightly tape a piece of fabric or paper to your glass or non-porous surface.

7. Tape the photocopy face-down on your paper or fabric. Don't let the tape cover the image.

8. Barely dampen the cotton with Citra-Solve® and squeeze it out. Rub it on the paper just until you see the ink show through. It should be barely damp - too juicy and your image will bleed and blur.

9. With the back of the metal spoon, rub, rub, rub hard and like crazy in all directions. You are moving the ink from the paper to the fabric.

10. Pick up one corner of the paper and peek. Look for spots that haven't transferred yet then put the paper back down and rub some more in that spot.

11. Toss the paper in the trash and let the solvent evaporate.

12. Feel free to play around with the image. Color it in with colored pencils, ink, paint or whatever you have on hand. Be creative! Have fun!

The only tricky part is finding a photocopier that works. If you are using Citra-Solve® (the other orange solvents I've tried have not worked) and you are rubbing and nothing is happening it is most likely the copy that is at fault. I test any copy I make right at the copy center. Dampen a cotton ball with the Citra-Solve® and stick it in a little zip-loc bag in your pocket. Make one photocopy then place it face down on another piece of paper on the counter, dampen with the Citra-Solve® then rub it a bit with the scissor handles on the counter, the back of your thumbnail, whatever you have there. If it's going to work it will work right away. If not, no amount of rubbing will work. Find another copy center. Don't leave the bag in your pocket too long. The solvent will eventually dissolve through the bag although it won't really hurt your clothes. (Ask me how I know!)

If you'd like to see it instead of just read about it I demonstrate the technique along with a lot of other fun techniques in the Quilting Arts DVD Workshop "Surface Design Sampler Platter."

Here is a link to the first of several Tutorials on how to Photoshop your images.

And There Was Much Fun To Be Had

Really - there was. In spite of the heat wave and barely-there air conditioning - we had a FANTASTIC time with the Burke Quilters Unlimited. The class was Screen Printing and the location was Judy Gula's most fantastic shop ever: Artistic Artifacts Annex.

 I can't seem to remember if this we were beading or learning photo transfer here.

Kathy is making a lovely piece with her citra-solv photo transfer.

You can see a tutorial here. 

Meghan is using transfer paper for her photo transfer piece.

 Cyndi Souder and Judy Gula laugh over a funny X-Acto knife story.

Hubby had been "using" her kit out in the garage for quite some time while she was looking for it.

Busy, busy students learning Screen Printing.

Photo-Transfer Fun on Bonnie McCaffery's Vidcast with Lyric!

Last year in Houston Bonnie McCaffery, who is one of my favorite people, took a little time out to film a few moments of fun and photo-transfer. You can see the results this month on her website here:

bonniemccaffery.com

Bonnie is also a wonderful teacher and a very creative artist. One of my favorite things is to see her teach a roomful of fearful women how to paint an absolutely gorgeous, and realistic looking face. Faces can be the hardest thing ever to paint. But she makes it easy. AND - she has a book and DVD that can show you how to do it yourself! 

So pop over and laugh with me through the vidcast. We'll take a peek at my book, "Art + Quilt" and play a little bit with some fun imagery. Say hi to Bonnie for me while you are there.

Photoshop Elements for Photo Transfer - Examples

This photo of the beautiful Marion Anderson has too many grey tones to transfer well in the CitraSolv process. Deleting the background then boosting the Brightness and Contrast removes enough ink that we can get a great transfer - keeping the details in her face.

It's a common problem when trying to transfer photos of any dark skinned person. This little cowboy also has an awful lot of stuff to compete with in the background of his photo. I deleted the background then selected certain areas such as his face to boost more or less than other areas. Now that I'm looking at it I see that I've blown out (made too bright) all the detail in his chaps. 

If you are smart and save your work (as a copy or with a different name each time) you can go back to a certain step and work from there.

Photoshop Elements for Photo Transfer - Examples

I'll give you a quick run down of the process I used to get this photo ready for the transfer process. Take a look at the tutorials to get the full instructions on how to use Photoshop Elements (or any other digital editing program) to do it yourself.

Baroness De Guestra

I used the Zoom tool to blow the picture up quite a bit for better visibility. Next I used the Erase tool at 100% opacity to outline the Baroness. There isn't quite enough contrast between her dress and the background for the Magnetic Lasso tool to be effective. Once she's got an outline then I used the lasso to select her, Invert the selection, and Delete the entire background.

I carefully used the Magnetic Lasso Tool to select just her face and body then played around with Brightness and Contrast. I used the command and the shift keys to add and subtract areas to the selection before I did so.

Once done I realized that the shadow of her dress on her thigh bothered me so I Selected only that area and boosted the Brightness. I like that much better.

I think the Baroness might have been a very interesting guest at a dinner party, don't you?

Tutorial: Photoshop Elements for Photo Transfer part 3

Welcome back to this long winded tutorial on how to use Photoshop Elements to get a vintage photo ready for the Citrasolv transfer process. Here is part 1 and part 2, which I highly recommend you go through first if you are just joining us.

Today we'll work just a bit more with this vintage photo of Saharet, downloaded from the Library of Congress' Flickr site, my favorite site for copyright free vintage photos.

I do love the photo just as it originally is - with all of it's dust speckles and such, but that much dark ink might not be wanted. We talked in part 2 about isolating your figure, but what if you want to keep some of the background. Choices, choices. I'll show you a few very useful tools that will help you lose some if the darkness of the original photo if that's what you choose to do.

Today's objective is to get rid of as many of the dust spots as we can, then try to boost the contrast as we lighten the background. I have a number of old family photos that I've spent time restoring and these tools are useful to know for that purpose as well. Remember, that you don't have to have the exact same program I do (Photoshop Elements 4.0) to follow these instructions. The commands usually have the same names and if you type them into the Search function in your Help menu at the top of the bar your program will show you where to find what you are looking for.

Step 1 - Crop, Select, Inverse

Using what you learned in parts one and two of this tutorial, Crop out the unnecessary stuff, use the Magnetic Lasso Tool to select Miss Saharet, then click Select, Inverse so that it is your entire background that is now selected.

In this screenshot I've selected the chair along with Saharet and haven't cropped out the frames yet. No worries.

Step 2 - Remove Dust

Now look up in the menu bar for Filter, Noise, Dust and Scratches. This filter is going to find all those white spots and fill them in with the same colored pixels that surround them. You'll see a control panel that looks similar to this. 

The radius is how many pixels wide your spots are, threshold - ummm. Not sure but since your preview button is on you can see what is actually happening as you slide your numbers back and forth. I think it smooths everything out or keeps edges sharp.

See that percentage number and the - and + signs? Use those to zoom in or out and go ahead and click and drag the picture around until you can see a spot that has some detail and a lot of spots in it so that you can keep an eye on what is happening as you proceed. Remember, if you don't like it hit that friendly Undo arrow and simply try again. 

Now that Saharet's background has lost its spots, let's play around with lightening the dark stuff.

Step 3 - Brightness and Contrast

With your select tool still glittering away around the background go ahead and play with your Brightness and Contrast sliders until you're happy with what you are seeing. My objective was to keep the flowers and chair but lighten the background considerably.

Now choose Select then Invert to switch your selection back from the background to your figure. Why do so, you ask? Many times there is more or less light and detail in the figure than the background and they might need quite different levels of adjustment in order not to lose details you want to keep. 

In this example notice that nothing is selected. When I play with brightness/contrast I loose most of the details in her torso long before I lose the darkness in the background. With the figure now selected I can play with contrast and bring her brightness in line with the background, without losing so much detail. So far so good. I could leave it here. (Are you remembering to Save As every so often?)

But of course I'm going to keep messing with the photo. That spot under the chair looks like a black hole now. I'll find Select, then Deselect on the menu bar then use the Magnetic Lasso Tool again to outline just the lower, dark part of the chair. This isolates that one area and lets you work just within that space. Again, use the Brightness/Contrast function to mess with the chair until it lightens up to match the rest of the photo. I'm always amazed at the details that are found in seemingly dark nothingness when I use this tool. Can you believe it?

Step 4 - Erase (softly)

Now I'm finally going to get around to using the Crop tool to get rid of the extra stuff around the borders. You might like those borders which is just fine. When I'm transferring my photocopy onto a piece of white fabric that will be cut and either pieced or fused into a larger composition I like the borders. When I'm transferring the image onto a larger piece of fabric that is not going to be cut down, sometimes I don't want hard edges to box in my image. It's all about choices and there is no one way to do things.

Now find the Eraser tool, set the opacity fairly low and choose a soft edged brush. Smooth over the dark spots around the top and sides until you are happy with what you are seeing. Remember to click often rather than doing this step all in one swoop so you don't have to redo the entire thing if you make a mistake. (Gotta love that undo function!) 

Well. There you go! This should give you enough information to spend lots, and lots, and lots of hours playing around with your photos. Over the next few days I'll post some before and after photos that I've messed around with. Thanks for sticking with it!

Tutorial: Photoshop Elements for Photo Transfer Pt 2

Welcome to part two of how to use Photoshop Elements to get your vintage photos ready to use for CitraSolv photo transfers. If you are coming in to this process here I highly recommend that you read through part one. Today we'll work on learning to isolate a figure by selecting it, and a little more about erasing and using the brightness/contrast tools.

Remember the lovely Saharet? This is a copyright free image courtesy of the Library of Congress' Flickr site. In the last tutorial I mentioned that while there is great contrast here, too much black ink might bleed. Just for kicks, let's pick Saharet out of her background and use her all by herself. It's a little painstaking but nothing too difficult.

Step 1 - Select

The main tool that we are going to use is a select tool called the Magnetic Select Tool. You can find it on the bar to the right - something that sort of resembles a lasso. Select that then move up to the tool bar on the top. There is enough of a contrast along the edge of the figure that this tool will work wonderfully well. Click the lasso with the Magnet on it. 

Next move over to Feather and decide how fuzzy you want your edges to be. The larger the number you choose here, the more pixels will be included in a fuzzy line around your image. I think I want the edges to be fairly sharp so I'll choose 2 pixels and a width of 2px. Anti-aliasing will make pixelated curves appear sharper so it's a good idea to leave that box checked. Edge contrast makes the dark side of your edge darker and the light edges lighter - again increasing sharpness.

Now use your cursor to slowly go around the edges of the image. You can click as you go to spot glue the line to the more complicated edges. Remember that if your image is a little too small use the Zoom tool. Click to zoom in until you can see your edges clearly.

If you are careful and lucky you can get all the way around your image then double click to close the loop. You should see a flashing dotted line around your image. If your loop disappears entirely click the Undo button (or use Control-Z) to hopefully bring your loop back. Sometimes my fingers get ahead of me and click one too many times and my loop disappears. Yup. The Undo button is my best friend.

If you have a mistake here and there it's not a big problem. Take this little loop for instance. Instead of going back and redoing the entire select process, you can add in that little part to your bigger loop. Hold down the option/alt key while you use the cursor to to loop around that missing part and it will be added to your loop. You should see a little + sign next to the lasso. If you included something that you didn't want to include you hold down the shift key while you use the curser to trace the part you want to exclude. You'll see a - sign this time. 

Step 2 - Invert

Now you have a lovely flashing line around your image. Find the Select drop down and choose Inverse (shift-control-I). This will choose everything around your image. You'll see two flashy dotted lines now. 

Step 3 - Delete

Easy now. Hit the Delete key on your keyboard. The whole background disappears. Cool huh? Now use the Crop tool (see pt. 1) to get rid of all of the extra white space. Finally, go back up to the Select drop down menu and click on Deselect to get rid of all those flashy lines. You can also click Command-D.

Step 4 - Contrast

Now feel free to use the Brightness/Contrast tools we learned in part 1 to punch up the contrast. Keep a balance between dark and light. Or you might like the image just like it is and skip this step altogether. And there you have it.  Miss Saharet all by herself and ready to be transferred.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 3 and we'll play around with this same image a little more.  I'll show you how to play with contrast and keep the background but lighten it up quite a bit - without losing Saharet in the process. 

Tutorial: Photoshop Elements for Photo Transfer Part 1

The process of moving the ink from a photocopy onto fabric with Citra-Solv is my favorite instant gratification technique in fiber arts. You can find a tutorial on the process here. Sometimes you might have a really wonderful image that isn't quite ideal for the process; either not enough contrast or too much dark ink in the background. Today I'll show you how to punch up the contrast in a photo to help the transfer to come out better.

In the tutorial I posted about choosing an image Miss Maharanee of Kapurthala came out as the best photo because of the plain background that didn't compete with the main image. She does have enough contrast and there isn't too much dark ink. Still - there are some things that you can do to make the image even better.

I'll be using Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 for the tutorials this week. It's an inexpensive program and only a couple of years after I bought it, it's up to version 8.0. It does everything that most digital editing hobbyists will need.

I also use Corel's Paint Shop Pro on our family desktop. It's much more powerful but quite a bit less expensive than the full blown version of photoshop. But then - I'm a digital editing junkie.

Don't despair if you aren't using the exact same program I'm using here. Most any inexpensive digital editing program can do what I'll show you today. Just click on help in the upper bar of whatever program you are using and search the function that you need and the program should tell you where it is.

Now - I could use Miss Maharanee just as she is - I like the vintage photo look. But I think I'll isolate her and make her features a bit more clear.

Step 1 - CROP

If I want to isolate Miss Maharanee I might as well get rid of all the extra pixels to begin with. Find your Crop tool - it usually looks something like this. You can also find it under Image on the upper menu bar.

Look to make sure that the Aspect Ratio says No Restriction, for Free Form. Otherwise the crop tool will only let you crop to a standard print size.

Click and drag the box as close to your image as you can without cutting off any parts you want to keep. The part that will be cropped will be grayed out. If you need to move it a bit grab one of the little boxes on the edge of the dotted line with your cursor and drag the box wherever you need it to be. Double click to select and crop the image. 

Now, if you accidentally cropped something you wanted to keep don't panic. Your best friend in digital editing are these two little arrows.  This are the UNDO and REDO buttons and I use them ALL the time! With these two little buttons at your disposal you don't need to fear messing anything up. Just click the little back arrow and it will take you back one step. You can click it as many times as you'd like to get to where you want to be. If you want to try something out and compare steps you can click back and forth as many times as you'd like to. You can also find the Undo button under Edit on the menu bar. The key command Control Z does the same thing. (Command Z on my mac.)

Step 2 - SAVE

Don't forget the most important part - saving your work. My program has the unsettling tendency to quit on my every once in a while right in the middle of a project. If I haven't saved along the way I have to start over. You should save your work every few changes. 

Under File, click Save As. NOT, I repeat NOT, Save. You want to keep your original as is. If you simply click Save you over wright your original file. Not good. Yes, of course you can always click undo until you get back to the beginning and save your work then, but this is less of a pain. Change the name, choose where to save your file, format it as a jpg and click Save. Alternatively, you could leave the name the same and click the As a Copy box if you'd like. 

Now you'll see a box like this. This is important. Slide the Quality button all the way up to the right. If you don't the file will be compressed waaaay too much and your image will be all pixelated. (Ask me how I know.) 

As I work I try to remember to Save a Copy, or Save As with a different name after every main change. That way I can go back to some place I liked and start from there - AND I don't lose my original.

Step 3 - BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST

Under the menu bar click Enhance, Adjust Lighting, Brightness/Contrast. Make sure the Preview box is clicked on so that you can see what happens as you move the slider back and forth.

Play with both of the adjustments until you find something pleasing to you. 

Here I've boosted the contrast up to about +17. Anything above that and I loose the edge definition on her shoulders. The contrast is boosted to about +19. If I go much above that in this particular photograph I loose some of the definition in her dress. 

There isn't anything magic about these numbers and every photo is different so you really do just need to play with the numbers until you find something you are happy with. Remember that you can always click the undo button if you don't like what you just did. Repeat step 2 - Save.

Step 4 - ERASE

Miss Maharanee is looking pretty good now, but I'd still like to get rid of some of the extraneous stuff around the edges of the photo. There are still smudges and markings that will show up when you make a transfer. I'd rather not have hard straight lines on the outside of my image.

Find the Eraser icon on the tool bar and click it. I want to blur things out gently so I'm going to set the Opacity at about %60. Click on Size in the Eraser Toolbar and move the slider up and down. You'll see a circle on your image that expands or contracts. That's the size of your eraser. I've also chosen a Brush (that's the squiggle next to Size) with fuzzy edges so that I don't get any hard lines from my eraser. Now just brush over the edges, clicking often with your mouse to reset. If you brush for a very long time without reseting you might make a mistake. Then when you undo you have to do the whole thing over. Erase things in short bits and then you only have a little bit to do over.

If you need to get in close to an area, such as the small space above her head you can use the Zoom tool to make the picture look bigger or smaller on your screen. (On my mac's sensor pad I use two fingers to scroll up or down to zoom in or out.) 

I've brushed over all of the edges, and the label that was written in the upper left corner so that now Miss Maharanee is unencumbered by edges of any sort. There is still a little ink around her, softening the image for something of a background fade. What do you think?

Repeat step 2 - Save. Tomorrow I'll continue the tutorial with instructions for selecting and deleting backgrounds entirely, or for boosting the contrast in only certain areas.