Solvent Transfer - Direct copies from magazine photos

[holmburgers]

I learned about this process from the book 'Spirt of Salts'.

Basically you take a page from a magazine, tape it face down onto a piece of paper and brush the back with a powerful solvent. A cellulose stripper is recommended in the book (IIRC). After brushing on, you put under weight and the ink will dissolve & transfer to the paper, giving you a unique copy of the original.

I'm wondering if anyone has done this. I've had zero success so far with a few different magazines.

Apparently the printing inks used & the solvent are important to success. It's a beautifully simple process, and would be a lot of fun if we could figure out which magazines work best.

[Photo Engineer]

We used to do this as kids with the comics page and the Rotogravure magazine.

PE

[holmburgers]

Awesome! Comic books would be the perfect fodder for this kind of thing.

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

And if you want the exact mold of us bill , you can do this process on glass Taiwanese men produced dollar bills with this technology and no one could understand the difference for 10 years

[BetterSense]

Doesn't this result in a flipped image?

[Photo Engineer]

Yes, but when printing the image it is re-reversed.

PE

[holmburgers]

PE, was your procedure more or less like I described? You probably destroyed some priceless 1st issue of Superman or something...

At first I tried acetone and that did nothing, so then I bought some higher grade solvent (can't remember off the top of my head) and this effectively dissolved the image on the back, but it apparently never made it's way to the opposite side & at any rate there was no transfer.

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Banknote , Postal Stamp or Precious Paper engravers always engrave reversed.

[Photo Engineer]

I think that we used Kerosene as solvent. It was readily available at that time. IDK now, that has been many years ago.

PE

[Rick A]

I used to do something like this as a teenager. I would transfer the image onto paper then onto a t-shirt. It came in kit form, chems and transfer paper. I dont reacll what chemicals were used, but they smelled similar to dry cleaning fluid. I had quite a business going for a while, most popular items were photos from Playboy on t-shirts.