U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: spot tone

Re: spot tone



Somewhere down in my cabinet there's a set of spot-tone...

...the set consisted of several types of black; a warm/sepia, an olive, a blue-black and a neutral.  There was a little sheet that gave you a drop-by-drop formula for each brand and type of paper on the market at the time...trouble being that the actual tone of the finished print varied according to a lot of particulars, type of developer being one.

Most of us should be familiar with the various pigments that are used to make black.  Mars Black is the blue-black, Ivory Black is the warm black...not sure what would give the live black but someone may be able to tell us that one...water colors already have gum arabic in them and I'd think about diluting them with distilled water with a drop of Photo-Flo or another wetting agent to help it penetrate the emulsion.  Note that one brand of watercolor, M. Graham, uses a wee bit of honey as a binder in their watercolors and they have a pretty good range of greys and blacks.

Obviously, Spot-Tone went out of business because "...we can always fix it in PHOTOSHOP!"

Best

argon

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