Gast
Hi,
According to the Fotoimpex catalogue, Tetenal Gold Toner is for warm tones (compare with the Nelson formula?). Are there any ready-made toners comparable to the Ansco 231 or Dupont 6T formulas, i.e. for blue tones from warm-processed papers or lithographs?
Best regards,
Martin
Gast
Tetenal Gold Toner produces the Rüel effect only with silver sulphide, i.e. following prior sulphur (or sepia) toning. For cool to blue-black tones, the print must be developed as warmly as possible.
The warmer the development, the more the gold toner can bloom.
Gast
Hello Mr Moersch,
First of all, thank you for the confirmation. However, after my initial attempts, I’m still searching for the right result:
Warm print (Fomatone MG/RC in Sepia): Turns blue (well, more of a violet tinge), but I would have expected more colour. The result is still dense in tone compared to a development with Classic Poly Cold Tone in Blue/Finisher, but already has a ‘fuzzy’ appearance due to the overexposure/under-development (for the warm print), even though the toner increases the contrast and deepens the blacks.
Lith (Fomatone MG/RC in 1+15), originally a rich brown, only shifts towards neutral (without the selenium-typical detour via blue-violet), and then stays there.
Do I stand any chance of achieving a distinct blue tone this way? Naturally more subtle than with an ink-based blue toner, and archival-quality, or is this simply the wrong approach?
Regards
Martin Pistor
Gast
Hello Mr Pistor,
You can produce beautiful blue tones using Fomatone (or Polywarmton) and gold toner. It’s quite a fiddly process, though – it takes a fair bit of fiddling around to get it right.
I used to do this quite often two or three years ago (Polychrome), and I reckon there should still be some notes somewhere on how to do it without a special developer.
There’s also a way to produce blue tones using Viradon!
Lith isn’t a bad choice, but the blue tone comes out better with a two-bath Lith process. What’s more, you’d get clean, deep shadows without any haze.
It might also work with Lith+Sepia. Because of the high light intensity required for the Lith, the Sepia needs to be heavily diluted, 1+50 to 1+150. Adding some ammonium chloride could help; I haven’t tried that with the Sepia yet. But then it tends to veer off towards purple quite quickly.
If you’re up for giving it a go, I can email you a few examples with ‘step-by-step instructions’.
Best regards
wm
Gast
Hello Mr Moersch,
I had already suspected the worst, but it’s not for nothing that I’ve moved away from the much-discussed ‘digital darkroom’.
I’m therefore very interested in your instructions (please send them to m.pistor@gmx.de).
This would give me a reasonably complete range from red/brown (Additive F is still to be tested) to blue, particularly as a black/blue counterpart to the blue/white cyanotypes. (Logically, brown/white would be missing, but you can achieve something similar with highly diluted lith, and not everything that’s logical is right, is it?)
Best regards,
Martin Pistor
Gast
Hello Mr Pistor,
An example of Lith (1+15) and Sepia (1+300) + gold toning can be seen today at www.photoportale.de under ‘Gallery/Image Discussion’, though not on Fomatone. The combination should produce a more intense blue.
Best regards,
wm
Gast
Hi there,
So, here are my initial impressions:
Moersch is right – Lith plus gold toner produces a blue tint, albeit a very subtle one, and after half an hour in the toner, a rich reddish-brown Lith.
I don’t think I’m entirely objective anymore; after all that fiddling about, I suppose I have to like the result, but I’ll definitely be doing it again.
I’ll spare you the full details online; the nuances that come out here get lost if you use automatic colour correction when scanning, or if you adjust the screen to a different colour.
Thanks for the tip,
Best regards,
Martin Pistor
Gast
>After all that fiddling about, I suppose I have to admit I like the result
I feel the same way – is the tone subtle? Or is it rather neither fish nor fowl?
The intensity of the blue tone naturally depends on the paper too. Oriental paper produces a rich blue; incidentally, it comes through more vividly after a brief pre-toning in selenium.
Another option: iron blue toners
With ready-made toners and even with the well-known recipes, you may end up ruining your painstakingly produced (BARYT) print, because by the third toning stage at the latest, blue precipitates and settles in the paper felt and on the gelatin. This can be prevented, as can the fading of the blue tone when rinsing out the yellow. The subject is too complex to cover here. Please get in touch if you are interested.
Gast
I might give Oriental a go, as it seems to be dirt cheap everywhere at the moment. So far, I’ve avoided the hassle of baryta paper, as RC prints are practically ready as soon as they’ve been rinsed. Just hang them up and that’s it.
Otherwise: definitely blue, but very, very subtle and elegant. Thanks to the lithographic process, it doesn’t look washed-out like warm-tone prints do.
Blue toners, on the other hand, look like a spilled inkwell.
Regards
Martin Pistor
