My impression is that DAS works nicely with color carbons (thin colored layers rather than one thick one), and with inkjet negatives, as the negatives can be designed to fit best the characteristics of the DAS.
Sort of; not quite though.
The reason why thin tissues, color and DAS are associated seems to be because this is how Charles Berger (who introduced UltraStable / DAS carbon in the early 1990s) used it, and after him Tod Gangler and presently people like Calvin Grier and Michael Strickland work. However, the one thing their workflows all have in common is that they use imagesetter negatives. This is crucial in making DAS work with thin tissues. There's nothing inherent to DAS that makes it like thin tissues; in fact, it's very much the opposite! The hardening action of DAS appears to be much less vigorous than of dichromate, which means that highlight retention is far more challenging with DAS than with dichromate. Due to this, it's in fact easier to work with relatively thick and low-pigmented tissues when using DAS in combination with
continuous tone negatives. I've written about this more extensively here:
https://tinker.koraks.nl/photograph...of-das-carbon-with-continuous-tone-negatives/ This particular blog was the culmination of several months of systematic experimentation, and my net conclusion is (and still remains) that dichromate is more forgiving when it comes to rendering delicate highlights. It's more challenging with DAS.
The reason why color printers 'get away' with thin tissues is because they generally use imagesetter negatives, which largely avoids the tonal threshold problem. I print exclusively from in-camera negatives, and then the tonal threshold is a very, very real issue and it's far more of an issue with DAS than with dichromate. The solution is to use a relatively low-pigmented tissue that's also fairly thick (otherwise no satisfactory dmax can be achieved) - very much like how you're printing, Vaughn - only I don't take it quite as far as you do because I don't require the relief.
In fact, speaking of relief, this is a bit of an issue with DAS. The 'default' way of printing with DAS is a double transfer. This suits me fine, because it means my images don't end up mirrored. But the drawback is that virtually no relief remains on the dried print as the image effectively sinks into the sizing of the final transfer paper. In my printing, I'm not after relief so I don't mind, but for you, Vaughn, this would probably be a firm dealbreaker.
Here's a small snippet from the relief on a drying DAS print after the second transfer; at this stage, the relief is already virtually gone, but it's still a bit visible:
In the dried print, it's totally gone; here's a section of a nearly identical print, but after drying:
This is photographed at an angle (hence the odd contrast, which is due to the paper texture) and as you can see, there's absolutely zero relief.
Btw, the illustrations above are from the prints also shown here:
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/showcase-for-your-hcwps.199853/post-2799621
In principle the relief is there alright with DAS; it's just masked by the double transfer process. Here's a small section of DAS carbon on glass, backed with another gelatin layer with gold print to make a kind of orotone; this is looking at the front of the glass:
The back of the plate where the image actually is (with the gold layer on top of it) still shows the relief of the image:
It's also certainly true that with DAS, you really have to tailor the negative to the printing process. With dichromate, you can vary a heck of a lot by changing pigment load and dichromate concentration, going pretty much in any direction you like. With DAS, you can vary pigment load
only to an extent and varying sensitizer concentration effectively doesn't do f-all. So you have to work on the negative, which is why I've been doing a lot of experimentation with chromium intensifier - yes, the irony is that I'm using dichromate to accommodate my DAS habit! I don't really mind because (a) I have a decent stock of dichromate left, (b) I don't need nearly as much as when I used it as a sensitizer, (c) it's easy to reduce the chromium VI to far less nasty chromium III when you're done and (d) since negative intensification all happens in a tray without any need to ever touch the negative while it's in there, the safety risks are also much less than when developing a dichromate-sensitized carbon print. I've also written a pretty recent blog on this dichromate intensification business here:
https://tinker.koraks.nl/photograph...ium-intensifier-for-silver-gelatin-negatives/
Sorry for the long message; I've spent quite some time on getting my DAS workflow to where it is now and in the process I've confirmed a few things others already said (but you sometimes have to experience it with your own hands before it really makes sense), and also deepened out a couple of things that others were very brief about or didn't appear to realize very well. I've written a lot on this in the hope that it saves some people the trouble; it's very much like Calvin's writings, but he has so far not really covered this from an angle of in-camera, continuous tone negatives because of his (understandable) commitment to a digital workflow and imagesetter negatives.