No. Farmer’s stop bath is a combination of bleach and fixer. However, you can bleach first and then, after a brief washing, fix the reduced silver. The advantage of this is that if you’ve over-bleached it, you can simply reduce it again and start from the beginning. With Farmer’s stop bath, the reduced silver is removed immediately.
Can you actually see a result during the first step – the bleaching – or does this only become apparent during fixing? If so, you could just use the developer straight away.
I very often treat individual areas of my prints with Farmer’s developer. I’ve been using two bottles of Spur that I bought from Impex a long time ago: dissolve 1.5 ml of A + 1.5 ml of B in 100 ml of water (lasts approx. 1 hour). If you apply this with a sponge to a medium grey, you’ll soon notice a lightening effect. For lighter tones, I’d perform further dilution.
I use this method, for example, on skin in portraits when I want it to be a little lighter. Dark areas of the image are extremely difficult to treat with this – the yellow cast mentioned by Uwe occurs if you overwork the paper with it. However, ‘pictorialist’ effects can also be created here if you overdo it with a stronger solution. However, the fact that darker areas react less well to the toner than lighter ones is also an advantage: this creates a certain ‘masking’ effect, allowing you to treat lighter areas without the darker surroundings being affected. You effectively increase the contrast in specific areas.
This is how I tone positives: After fixing, briefly treat the wet sheet in the light with a sponge on a smooth surface, rinsing it with water immediately afterwards each time. You have to work gradually here. It is all too easy for a part of the image to suddenly become completely washed out if you are not careful. Then you can throw the sheet away. To be on the safe side, I put the paper back into the fixer briefly after toning.
