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.