I have some fibre based prints which have been fixed, washed, treated with wash-aid, washed again and dried. I now wish to tone them in Kodak's Rapid Selenium Toner. What's the best method?

Thanks, Gary.

-- Gary Holliday (boderectium@yahoo.com), February 23, 2002

Answers

Get them wet again....then put them on the toner, after wash throughly and dry....

-- Jorge Gasteazoro (rossorabbit@hotmail.com), February 23, 2002.

Jorge is right on. However, one caveat: If the prints are not thoroughly fixed and/or washed, stains can result. Also, if you used a hardening fixer, the toning may not take place. In case of doubt I recommend the following procedure:

Soak the prints till completely wet (5-10 min)

Re-fix for 1/2 the recommended time in fresh non-hardening fixer (type and dilution up to you. I have used plain hypo with a dash of sodium sulfite for 3 minutes in the past. I now use a rapid fixer at "film strength" for 1 minute.)

Transfer the prints directly from the fixer to the toning bath WITHOUT an intermediate rinse.

Tone until the desired tone change is reached. Then hypo-clear and wash as usual.

Hope this helps. ;^D)

-- Doremus Scudder (ScudderLandreth@compuserve.com), February 24, 2002.

The effect of hardeners in acid fixers is active only during the gelatin is wet. Once the gelatin-coasted material is dried, the effect is gone. Therefore, re-fixing is unnecessary as long as the original print is completely fixed (as it should be).

This is another reason hardener is pretty much unnecessary in most hand processing situations.

-- Ryuji Suzuki (rsuzuki@rs.cncdsl.com), February 24, 2002.

I would advise against going straight from fixer to selenium, and instead at least rinse the print and wash for three to five minutes before transferring to the selenium.

You can keep selenium for a long time, so no use contaminating it with any more fixer than necessary. There was a thread several months ago that discussed this issue that you might want to look up in the archives.

-- Jim Rock (jameswrock@aol.com), February 24, 2002.

If you're going for a heavy-toned look (reddish purple tone) and have trouble acheiving the intensity you want in a reasonable amount of time warm the toner up a bit. Selenium toners activity is affected by temperature and increasing the toner temp to 90-100 degrees can halve the toning time.

-- Tony Mastres (mastres@id.ucsb.edu), March 11, 2002.