Those who have never made a transparency will have doubtless printed
silver prints from their negatives, and when printing, how often do you
find that to secure the best results you require to have recourse to some
little dodge.

Now, let us bear this in mind when using such a negative for the printing
of a transparency, for, as I have said before, it is only a process of
printing, after all. Although we cannot, when using a sensitive plate,
employ the same means of dodging as in the case of a silver print, still
we are not left without a means of obtaining the same results in a
different way, and this just brings me to what I have already hinted at
previously, that a deal more depends on the manipulative skill of the
operator than in the adoption of any particular make plate or formula;
and not only does this manipulative skill show itself in the exposure,
development, etc., but likewise comes into play in a marked manner even
in the preparation of the negative for transparency printing.

Let me deal with the latter point first. You will at once understand that
a negative whose size bears a proportion similar to 3¼ by 3¼ will lend
itself more easily to reduction; thus whole plate or half plate negatives
are easy of manipulation in this respect, and require but little doing
up. But as other sizes have at times to be copied into a disk¼ by 3¼,
recourse must be had to a sort of squaring of the negative. Now, here I
have a negative 7¼ by 4½, which is perhaps the worst of all sizes to
compress into the lantern shape, so I have, as it were, to square this
negative, and this I do by simply adding to sky. I take a piece of
card-board and gum it on to the glass side of the negative, and this
addition gives me a size that lends itself easily to reduction to the
lantern disk, and in no way detracts from the picture.