Re: When to tone?

Many thanks to Ryuji, Charlotte and Jonathan for your comments on this topic.

In case anyone is interested my question is a continuation of the
thread on silver metal replacement with noble metal toning. One I had
carried out the bleaching tests on palladium toned kallitype prints
and discovered that a very small percentage of the silver metal was
left unprotected the next logical step was to see if a second toning
with gold, selenium or polysulfide would result in the conversion of
the remaining silver metal to more protected substances. It would
clearly be much better for me to be able to carry out the second
toning later with a batch of prints than during initial processing,
thus the motivation for the question.

Regarding split toning, when one tones kallitype first with gold,
then follows with palladium and platinum, some highly interesting
results are possible, with purplish/bluish highlights and warm brown
shadows. And of course there is a very big difference in the final
look of the print when this type of toning is carried out before
fixing rather than after.

I have no idea if this concept could be carried over to toning of
regular silver gelatin papers. However, as I recall there was an
interesting article in one of the fairly recent issues of
Post-Factory Photography involving split toning of gold and selenium
of silver gelatin papers.

Sandy

>From: Sandy King <sanking@clemson.edu>
>Subject: When to tone?
>Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 20:34:45 -0400
>
>> Is there any literature that compares the effectiveness of toning
>> silver prints with either selenium or polysulfide during processing,
>> while the print is still wet, as opposed to drying them first and
>> toning several days or weeks later?
>
>I don't think that issue was studied and published (Do you know,
>Richard?), but I don't see why/how that difference affects unless the
>image degradation is already started while storage. There can be some
>minor differences such as slight difference in necessary processing
>time, resulting hue, etc. but it shouldn't be any larger than
>day-to-day variation of usual darkroom practice.
>
>--
>Ryuji Suzuki
>"Reality has always had too many heads." (Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound, 1997)
Received on Wed Nov 12 16:19:12 2003