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Gelatin lifter is widely used for recovering shoeprints from crime scenes. Dusty shoeprints removed from paper with loose fibers, cloth or plasterboard, might be concealed by the detached fibers. A novel technique to clean the gelatin lifter from the interfering contaminations, using adhesive lifters, was developed. The adhesive lifter is applied directly on the surface of the gelatin lifter, and is removed instantly. The adhesive lifter removes the upper layer of the attached material on the gelatin lifter. After removing the concealing material from the hidden imprint, the quality of the visualized imprint is improved. The cleaning process can be applied as many times as needed and the optimum number is different for each substrate. The small dust particles comprising the shoeprint remained attached to the sticky side of the gelatin lifter even though the adhesion force applied by the adhesive lifter is great. Repeating the procedure too many times could harm the quality of the print severely, yet the advantages of this method are greater than the risks of relocation of image quality reduction.

A number of vicinal cyclic diketones, most of them belonging to the 1,2-indanedione series, have been prepared and tested as potential reagents for latent fingerprint development. Unsubstituted 1,2-indanedione and a number of its mono- and dimethoxy- derivatives exhibited excellent properties as fluorogenic reagents for latent prints on paper. Structural modifications, such as substitutions at position 3, omission of the benzene ring or increase of the five-membered to a six-membered ring, considerably reduced this activity. Quite surprisingly, benzo[f]indane-1,2-dione, which was synthesized for the first time in this work, was significantly inferior to 1,2-indanedione as a fingerprint reagent. Even at this stage, before optimization of the reaction conditions, it can be said that some 1,2-indanediones are at least as sensitive as DFO. Their solubility in nonpolar solvents and relative case of preparation are further advantages. It is the authors' opinion that 1,2-indanedione itself may soon become a practical fingerprint reagent.