Hi

What does technical information mean when they talk about warm and cold type photo papers ? is it just the tone of the paper.

Ta ade

-- ade (adriancobb@hotmail.com), March 05, 2002

Answers

- it's the tone - it's the emulsion - warmtone papers are better suited for toning the print afterwards

-- (classicphoto@leest.net), March 06, 2002.

Before toning, warm tone papers have a slightly "warmer" look when processed. They turn very warm with with a brownish tone when processed in selenium. The degree depends on toning time and on the concentration of selenium.

IMHO, they are not always the best papers for all toning. For example, when sepia toned they tend to turn a putrid yellow rather than brown. So you have to experiment with different toners to see if you like the look.

Also, I have found that warm toned papers are slower that neutral paper of the same brand. I am assuming this is true with all warm toned papers, though I have only tried about three brands.

-- Jim Rock (jameswrock@aol.com), March 06, 2002.

warm tone papers have a chlorobromide or chloride based emulsion where neutral/cold papers have a bromide based emulsion. warm papers are considerably slower than neutral papers.

-- r (ricardospanks1@yahoo.com), March 06, 2002.

The warm toned papers tend to have a finer grain giving a smoother gradation than cool toned papers. If you us a developer like Ethol LPD, which when you change dilutions you can either warm or cool down a particular paper some what. The warm tone papers today have a creamy colored base whereas the cool toned papers are a white base and sometimes with incorporated brightners built into the emulsion.

-- Scott Walton (walton@ll.mit.edu), March 06, 2002.

It's the color of the black in the print. Some blacks are blue-black (cold tone) some are warm-black, some brown-black (warm-tone), and some just plain brown (also warm-tone). There is also "neutral black" which is just plain black, with no color bias.

If you think of mixing a little blue or brown paint with black paint you'll get the idea. Then you thin this paint down with white to get the grays, and that's when the image tone can become very obvious.

While some of these tones are very subtle, particularly cold-tones, some of the warm-tones at the extreme lose all sense of "black" and just become brown.

Thirty years ago we had more choices than we do today for image tone and for texture as well.

The tone of the paper itself is usually referred to as the "base color", which can be pure white, white, off-white, cream, etc.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), March 06, 2002.

BTW, if you pick up an old Kodak Master Darkroom Dataguide from the 60's or early 70's they had real print samples that show all of this regarding textures, image tone, paper weights, etc. You'll also see interesting things like Panatomic-X in sheet film sizes.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), March 06, 2002.

My personal opinion is that for some images warm tone papers provide a much longer scale and better gradation. Also, not all warm tone papers have the creamy or buff paper base--for instance, Bergger warm papers have a white paper base, as does Agfa Record Rapid (once called Insignia in the U.S.).

-- Ed Buffaloe (edb@unblinkingeye.com), March 06, 2002.

I have a 1965 edition of the Kodak Darkroom Dataguide. There certainly were some interesting papers back then. I particularly miss Medalist J. Ed, Forte Polywarmtone Plus also has a white paper base.R

-- Robert Orofino (minotaur1949@iopener.net), March 06, 2002.

I thought Bregger and Forte PWT are the same? The Forte has a white base which can be nice if you dont like the warm base of Ilford Warmtone...

-- Russell Brooks (russell@ebrooks.org), March 07, 2002.