Re: Gum Tri-Color Yellow

Katharine said, my incredibly large snip: "I was
> curious about the question whether yellow as a rule prints without
> distinct differences between the steps."

Katharine et al,
      Great minds think alike, Katharine :)
     I, too, ran some step wedges (it is "wedges" as in "thong underwear",
on the front of my 4x5 envelope, anyway; that's what Stouffer's calls it)
before I left town for the weekend.
     Actually, to be honest with you, I did almost the same thing you did
for different reasons. I put them in the water, then found out my neighbor
died, so I left them on "auto development" for a couple hours while I sat
with the family and smoked a cigar in honor of a very fine woman :( Thus my
wedgies are no longer a scientific experiment (I usually develop for 1/2
hr):
     I ran 4 of nickel titanate and 4 of cad yellow, at 1,2,3,4 min
increments. My original assertion is that yellow, because of its paleness,
appears less distinct in steps as other colors, meaning that Tom's
perception might be related to this. This was comparing yellow to magenta
and blue.
     I cleared out the dichromate stain (even with the low dilution) because
it deceives me into thinking I have more steps than I do at the low end, in
other words, once the stain is cleared out, where I thought I had distinct
steps, I end up having merged steps, so I did this.
     Nickel titanate produces a very gradual shift between steps, a "creamy"
shift. It also produces more weakly colored step wedges at the same
dilution as cad yellow. Cad yellow produces punchier step wedges and more
distinct steps, and magenta moreso yet. Thus I do think that distinct steps
are related to color choice (yellow vs. magenta or blue) but probably more
pigment choice as you were saying, Katharine, and pigment brand choice (not
to mention paper choice, exposure, dichromate, humidity, on and on ad
nauseum, but we won't go there). And mea culpa, I am not exactly sure if
the nickel titanate is D. Smith, W+N, or M. Graham, but I promise I'll label
my bottles better from now on so we can talk apples to apples!
     And Tom, I am using that weak nickel titanate right now on a tricolor.
It still came out, after the yellow on top of the cyano, that yukky pea
green. I'm printing the magenta tonight. I've never yet felt the need for
a fourth coat using the Wang process, but I'll watch it tonight and see if
something changes. I was wondering if maybe you also weren't exposing
enough, and a lot of your yellow came off?
Chris
Received on Sun Jun 6 17:42:29 2004