Antique Retouching Desk Was Photoshop for 19th Century Photographers

Oct 17, 2025

Jeremy Gray

A hand holding a pencil traces over a photographic negative of a woman's face, which is placed inside a wooden box with a glass lid. The box sits on a green cutting mat.

Photographer Markus Hofstätter, whose creative analog photography projects have been featured on PetaPixel many times, recently tried his hand at manual retouching using an antique retouching desk from the 19th century.

Although many modern photographers first think of photo manipulation software when they imagine image retouching, the idea of tweaking photos has been around long before computers. Photographic manipulation has been around for almost as long as photography itself, and many famous early 20th century photographers were celebrated for their incredible darkroom editing skills, including Ansel Adams. This PetaPixel story from 2013 shows how some iconic Magnum Photos were edited in the darkroom, too.

“I often hear about the ‘good old days’ when there was no Photoshop and retouching,” Hofstätter says in the video above. “If somebody tells you that, you may show them this video.” He also mentions a great article by Jocelyn Sears on Mental Floss that discusses how photo retouching worked before digital photography was invented in the late 20th century.

In Hofstätter’s case, he’s using an antique retouching desk from the late 19th and early 20th centuries to edit glass wet plate negatives. It’s an incredible device, and given its condition now in 2025, it is clearly well-made.

A black-and-white photographic negative of a person with long hair partially covering their face, staring directly at the camera. The image has high contrast and visible film edges.

It includes multiple components, including tilting arms and adjustment mechanisms. The basic idea, as shown in Hofstätter’s video above, is that an adjustable mirror reflects light up through the back of a glass plate negative set on the top of the folding desk. The photographer places tracing paper on top of the glass plate negative while the reflected light filters through from below. The photo being retouched is from Hofstätter’s “Emily Portraits of Hope” series. It’s a really powerful series, and well worth checking out.

A hand holds a pencil over a sheet with a blurred, high-contrast, monochrome image of a person’s face, preparing to trace the outline of the portrait.

By using tracing paper, Hofstätter avoids making any permanent alterations to his negative, while still being able to make an incredible final print. There appears to be a developer burn on the portrait he is retouching, and the subject has some blemishes that Hofstätter wants to fix. While he looks like a pro, this was the first time he has ever retouched a photo using this technique. With a pencil, Hofstätter draws over the burns and blends the gray with the color of the negative itself.

A hand lifts a sheet with a black-and-white image of a woman’s face from a wooden photo printing frame on a reflective metal surface.

A black-and-white photograph of a woman’s face is soaking in a white tray of liquid, while water is being poured onto it from a beaker, likely as part of a photo development process.

A black and white portrait of a woman with long hair partially covering her face, framed by a white border and set against a textured, blue-gray surface.

Then it’s time to make a positive using photo paper, a salt solution, silver nitrate, and a copy frame. After it was exposed in the Sun, Hofstätter washed the print, toned it, and fixed it. The resulting final retouched print is lovely. While the photographer admits he could improve his technique a bit, it’s a really fun retouching project and a fascinating look at some of the history of photo manipulation.

Image credits: Markus Hofstätter