Cooltone/Warmtone differences

I have seen some recent threads describing both "cooltone" and "warmtone" paper and developers. I generally use Ilford MG IV and Ilford universal paper developer. I don't have much experience with the different papers. I intend to test a few types soon.

Is the choice of cooltone or warmtone based on the subject or just a personal preference? It is sometimes hard to judge this effect on scanned images.

Thanks,
John

JHannon said:

Is the choice of cooltone or warmtone based on the subject or just a personal preference?

Thanks,
John

Click to expand...

My answer must be a little bit of both. It's a question of what mood or feeling you want to convey.

I have a hard time telling cooltone from standard Ilford MGIV after the fact, but if I print the same image using the same times on both cooltone and standard, the cooltone appears more contrasty than the standard using the same filter.

Warmtone has a different looking highlight tone than the other two, to my eye anyway. I have recently started using warmtone because I want to use toners and the warmtone is said to take toning better, but other than what I mentioned, the differences seem minor, to me...

- Randy

Thanks for your replies.

For me it is about both the subject and my taste. Lately I have been printing images that to me work perfectly in warmer paper. Lots of weathered wood and dry parairies. When I do mountain scenes, or industrial stuff with metal, I much prefer a colder paper. I have never worked with Ilford "Cold Tone" paper, when I refere to colder paper, I mean something closer to neutral such as MGIV. As for my taste, I have seriously fallen in love with J&C polywarmtone glossy paper, which is from Forte. It has a neutral white base and really georgeous warm emulsion that I absolutely love. I can actually imagine nearly anything on this paper, I am so in love with it.

I find that in my personal experience, warmtone is a little more use-specific than neutral tone or even cold tone paper. Also, as a beginner I found warm tone harder to get good results from, as the blacks are often not as black and as such, exposed (sorry about the pun) my shortcomings/lack of skill and or experience. Also, if I was to desire a very decisive, definite result from toning, I would go with a warm-tone paper.
But in the end, I woud say that some subjects take better to different types of paper - depending on the feel/look you want.
In the end, I think it is the same story as with most tools available to the photographer - there is a right one for each job, from subjective to objective judgements and everything in between! Nothing will substitute for seeing what results you get from a given combo, and how you like to see it applied to your work.