Texture Screen

You can make some interesting and unusual enlargements by printing through a texture screen -- a device that gives the print a textured appearance.

The texture can be any appealing cloth, wire, glass, plastic, or other material with a grained appearance. Some texture screens are commercially available in the form of film sheets. Others you can make at home yourself. For example, you can make a simple texture screen by tautly stretching a sheer cloth over a frame that can be placed over your enlarger easel.

Most textured screens are used in contact with the emulsion of the enlarging paper on the easel. You may need to place a sheet of clear glass over the texture screen to hold it in contact with the paper. Otherwise you could obtain a blurred texture effect when the screen isn’t in good contact with the paper. You can keep the screen in position during all or part of the exposure, depending on the degree of effect you want. If you want the screen in place for only part of the exposure, divide the total exposure time in parts so that you can remove the screen when the enlarger is off. Make sure you don’t move the paper between exposures.

You can easily make other varieties of texture screens by photographing textured surfaces. For example, use strong side lighting to bring out the texture of a material such as charcoal-type drawing paper or a sheet of unprinted KODAK Paper. Take a closeup picture of this and you can use the negative as a textured screen. Put the texture screen into the negative carrier together with the negative you are going to enlarge, and print them both at the same time. This procedure gives your print a much more pronounced texture effect than you get with contact texture screens.

A texture screen can cause a slight loss of print contrast. You can compensate for this by using paper of a higher contrast grade.

Not all subjects benefit from the use of texture screens. In general, landscapes that have large open areas lend themselves to this treatment, but there may be many exceptions. The best rule is try it, and if it looks good, use it.