[alt-photo] Re: ECONOMICS OF TONING

[Ryuji Suzuki]

From: Keith Gerling <keith.gerling at gmail.com>
Subject: [alt-photo] Re: ECONOMICS OF TONING
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:01:26 -0500

> I have no expertise in toning, but I do find it ironic that
> so many people want to sepia, or brown-town a silver-gelatin
> print, but when confronted with a brown or sepia VanDyke,
> argyrotype, etc., the first inclination is to blacken it
> with gold-toning.

There are a few different types of sulfiding toners, but the
range of results varies widely depending on how you use
them. If you use brown toner (a solution of liver of sulfur)
very lightly, you don't see much visual effects immediately
but you'll realize increase in density when the print is
completely dried (and the image is still black). You see
similar density increase with selenium but in that case you
already see the effects while the print is in the toning
bath. This is with silver gelatin process where the image
forming silver particles are bigger than the materials you
mentioned. With print out silver images, the image silver is
so tiny that most sulfiding toning bath would probably react
too fast. But I wonder if there's a good way to slow down and
limit the rate of toning reaction so as to achieve the density
increase without significantly browning or yellowing the image.

If you are only concerned about protecting silver image
without changing the image tone or density, I came up with an
easy and inexpensive method...

--
Ryuji Suzuki
"If I want to find out anything, I'm not gonna read Time magazine, I'm
not gonna read Newsweek, I'm not gonna read any of these
magazines. Because they have got too much to lose by printing the
truth." (Bob Dylan, Don't Look Back, 1965)