Bromoil is the odd one out in comparison with most of the other early processes. The most obvious difference is that it is not a contact printing technique. The starting point of a bromoil print is a conventional bromide print made in the normal way in an enlarger, thus doing away with the need for an ultra violet light source. Once the print has been developed, fixed and washed, the treatment is carried out on the gelatin coating of the exposed print. This obviously is a radical departure from even the other gelatin and dichromate processes such as gum and carbon. This is the stage at which the photographer crosses the border into the domain of the artist and art printmaker. The silver image is replaced by printers ink (any colour you care to mix), and the original photograph is transformed into a paper 'plate' which can be used in an etching press to be transferred onto hand made paper, see [17 . Bromoil transfer]. One of the advantages of bromoil is that having made the initial bromide print you can carry out all the remaining work on the kitchen table or in a studio in full daylight.

The effect of light on a mixture of gelatin and potassium dichromate had been known from the earliest days of photography, but the application of this principle to make the bromoil print was not made until 1907. Since then it has tended to be associated with leisured amateurs- quite often retired civil servants or bank managers. Possibly because it is not an entirely photographic process a number of myths and misconceptions have grown up around it. Sadly, much of the literature on the subject reflects this desire on the part of its users to maintain some sort of secrecy. Special inks and brushes made from polecats tails (costing a fortune), appear regularly as part of the mythology. The aesthetic has been pretty strange as well. Bromoil tends to be a dark process - if you brush black ink onto a piece of paper you can't reasonably expect delicate high key results first time. The process also lends itself to a certain amount of manipulation, but always of the worst sort. Telegraph poles and wires can be delicately removed from misty rural landscapes and dramatic cloud effects superimposed onto carefully composed woodland scenes. It is a depressing fact of life that bromoil has been used to this day to perpetuate some of the worst aspects of nineteenth photographic pictorialism. On the other hand, it is one of the few old processes which have never really fallen into disuse.