_How to Prepare Albumenized Prints for Colouring._--Pour over them a little matt varnish. This removes the greasiness, and gives a fine tooth and ivory-like surface for the artist to work upon.
_How to Remove Silver Stains from the White Ground of a Vignette._--Touch it with a solution of cyanide of potassium, and wash off immediately. The other parts of the picture will not be injured.
_How to Stipple a Window White or Yellow._--For white, mix a little dextrine and kaolin in water. Dab the mixture on the glass with a piece of cotton. For the purpose of obscuration that is quite enough; but if sightliness be essential, finish by stippling with the ends of a hog's-hair brush. For yellow, mix a little dextrine and deep orange chrome in powder together in water, and apply it to the window in the same manner. Dabbing once or twice with a piece of cotton will exclude white light and make a luminous dark room. The same mixture makes an excellent backing for dry plates to prevent halation.
A great deal has been written and said about lights and lighting--a great deal too much; yet more must be said and written.
Light is to the photographer what the sickle is to the shearer--a good reaper can cut well with an indifferent sickle, but an indifferent reaper never gets a good sickle in his hand. A good photographer, who also understands light and shade, can produce good pictures in an ordinary studio. It is the indifferent photographer who runs after "fancy lights," and is, like a benighted traveller in pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp, eventually left floundering in a bog. It is folly to construct powerful concentrators if powerful reflectors have to be employed to counteract their defects. If a limited amount of diffused light be absolutely necessary it is best to retain it and use it in its simplest and least expensive form.
When I commenced photography glass houses were scarcer in England than comets in the heavens, and the few that were in existence were all constructed on false principles. It was not until I visited America that I saw a _properly_-constructed studio. The Americans were, and are, prone to give stupid names to sensible things; and the names they gave to their studios were no exceptions. This, that, and the other photographer advertised his "mammoth skylight." I went to sit, see, and be satisfied that their mode of lighting was very superior to ours. I was convinced _instanter_ that the perpendicular sides and sloping roofs of our miserable little hothouses were mistakes and things to be abhorred, while their spacious rooms and "mammoth skylights" were things to be admired and adopted.