Impossible Project PX70 PUSH - Emulsion Lifts

These images, which you may have seen in an early post here, are emulsion lifts from Impossible's PX70 PUSH film. (click through for larger image)


For anyone who doesn't know, emulsion lifts have been done for years, but were originally only able to be done with peel apart films. Now, all of Impossible's new films are able to be lifted. Emulsion lifts are basically the process of separating the layers of the film and transferring the top emulsion layer to a new surface. You can see a video of the basic process here. One of the major benefits of lifting the Impossible film is that it stops all chemical reaction, just like peeling the film would, which means that your image will no longer fade or have a color shifts over time.


These images were my first attempt at doing an emulsion lift. It is a bit tedious, but I think the results are interesting. For these images, I didn't have brushes to work with, so I used cotton swabs. Besides the fact that they fall apart after some use in water, they worked out pretty well. For the transfer surface I picked up a couple different types of heavy stock watercolor paper knowing that it would hold up well and not have as much bend when it dried. This of course, is one of the darker papers that I bought which I used with these images because I wanted an older/antique look to the final images.


All in all, I was happy with the results, and as you can see from left to right I started to get the hang of it with repetition. I won't be doing this with all of my Impossible images, but it's a good tool to have when you want a different look or just want to preserve a photo.