U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | RE: Glycerol as humectant for POP Pd prints at low RH

RE: Glycerol as humectant for POP Pd prints at low RH



Thanks Sandy,

But we have to clear the longevity issue -> will this practice affect
the longevity of the print considerably?

Regards,
Loris.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy King [mailto:sanking@clemson.edu] 
Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 11:41 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: Re: Glycerol as humectant for POP Pd prints at low RH


Loris,

Congratulations on taking the time to test that premise. It is 
potentially a very useful piece of information.

Now, if more pt/pd printers  would take the time to learn carbon as 
you have no telling what kind of innovations we might see!!

Sandy King


At 11:18 PM +0200 2/25/07, Loris Medici wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>Probably I'm not the only smart person to tried this before but
>since I haven't found a reference in the list archives, I decided to 
>share:
>
>I was having hard time making cold/neutral toned POP Pd prints
>lately; the RH of my darkroom changes around 25-30% and printing w/o 
>drying thoroughly (in other words: with almost wet paper) isn't a 
>good choice since I'm using a relatively weak digital negative 
>substrate and printing on almost-wet paper = ruining the negative 
>due excess humidity. (The negative substrate I use is Ultrafine 
>Crystal Clear.) I also don't prefer to use a thin (1-3 mils) 
>polyester sheet between the negative and the paper because sharpness 
>will suffer... (I'm printing using a 11x14" contact printing frame 
>and a bank of BL tubes.)
>
>Anyway, given the above criteria, I decided to put glycerol
>(glycerine) into my coating solution. Since this compound is used as 
>a humectant in both carbon printing (tissue will retain humidity 
>when some glycerol is present and won't brittle) and silver-gelatine 
>emulsion making, I thought it may help me in retain humidity in the 
>paper -> letting me get cold/neutral tones.
>
>It works! I added a drop of glycerol per 10 drops of coating
>solution, dried the paper for 10 minutes and got a neutral print. 
>Without the glycerol - keeping all other parameters constant - I 
>would get a warm (brown) print.
>
>Do you think adding glycerol will affect longevity? I'm using very
>little... (0.1ml per 1ml coating solution)
>
>Regards,
>Loris.