Gold toning silver gelatin prints

[mshchem]

The times I've used Kodak Blue Toner, it responds very nicely when paired with Fomatone (Blue!) and contact papers like Fomalux and Azo (deep intense blacks, slightly cool). Rudman has examples,.

Needs to have a chloride element to react (from my experience)

Combination of sulfide toners and Kodak Blue Toner can produce crazy reds even orange.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Everything depends on the specifics. There are a number of gold toners which differ from one another; the same can be said for sulfide toners. And the response of specific papers vary, even within the same general brand. Then specific paper developers play their own part. It can seem complicated, or be quite fun, depending on the individual experimenter.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I’ve been attempting to gold tone fomabrom 112 and failing.

I got a liter of toner from my photography school. I believe it was bostok and sullivan mixed in 2022.

My first attempt I took a section of a print I made earlier this year. Soaked the print for 5-10 to hydrate the emulsion and then put it into the gold toner for 5 minutes of constant agitation. There was no visible difference in the print.

My second attempt I replenished the toner with 2ml of .2% gold chloride and put my print into the toner for 20 minutes of constant agitation. I also cut the test print in half to compare. There was no visible change.

Attached are the results of the last test (top is toned, bottom is untoned).

So! Would love any advice folks might have or what to try next.

Thanks!

I'd try direct sulphide toning andenjoy the results. A lot cheaper than goldtoning too.

 

[pentaxuser]

Here is the gold toned "Girl on beach" to which I referred which seems to demonstrate that gold toner can produce a very subtle blue Could this have been done equally well with an iron blue toner? Well I cannot say for definite that it could not but I have seen several iron blue toned prints but none with quite this kind of blue

pentaxuser

 

[DREW WILEY]

Depends on the specific paper they used.

 

[koraks]

very subtle blue

I wouldn't call that 'subtle'! In my book that's a pretty saturated blue. It's also kind of magenta. Doesn't look like gold toning to me, but...anything might have happened when this was scanned/digitized. It may have been brushed up digitally, making the colors come out more saturated, shifted etc.

Could this have been done equally well with an iron blue toner?

I've not had a paper tone this way in gold. With iron toner, yes, it's easy. Tone with iron, which will yield a more cyan blue. Then wash the print briefly in a very dilute sodium carbonate solution, which will make it shift to magenta as seen here. In fact, I were pressed to make a print like this, I'd approach it this way and not with gold toner, which would be challenging to get to tone with this degree of saturation. If it's like this in real life of course, which I doubt.

PS: is the original maker of the photograph OK with you posting it here?

 

[DREW WILEY]

I too was wondering whether the purplish effect was due to a scanning/web oddity, or actually present in the print.
When gold toner is involved, the slight blue tends to be selective, rather than overall.

 

[koraks]

Yes, and in my experience it's very monochromatic in hue. The example shown goes from cyan in the shadows to magenta in the highlights. Again, it can very well be a digital artefact.

 

[pentaxuser]

From what I knew of the originator he did quite a bit of gold toning and this is a scan of the toned print I'd have thought that if his scanner has not replicated what he had in his hand as the gold toned print he'd have noticed and either done something to correct it or stopped trying to scan it. He even uses his print as an example in a thread on gold toner

He was a major contributor to this forum for the few years he was here. He later joined FADU where he was a founder member He never struck me as someone who would either lie about it being gold toned if it wasn't or try to produce something that he had not produced in the darkroom

You may not think much of it as a toned print and can see "flaws" in it to an extent that I cannot but my sole purpose was to give anyone interested in what gold toning can do a chance to see one.

Of course scanning can, it appears, do all sorts of thing to alter an image but it does strike me that you are getting very close to claiming this gold toned print is not in fact gold toned which is tantamount to calling the originator a liar when I can find no evidence to that effect

We can debate whether my choice of the word "subtle" is accurate or not until the cows come home but I used it to distinguish the blue from what I had seen in any other iron blue toned prints

What this has taught me is to consider very carefully whether to submit anything in future

I need to learn from my mistakes

pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

What this has taught me is to consider very carefully whether to submit anything in future

I need to learn from my mistakes

If there is any issue, it only arises because he (Dave Miller) is no longer here, and as far as I can discern, isn't on FADU any more.
I'm not aware if he is still alive.
We have no problem with sharing things that have been published - including on social media - for public consumption. And we would have no problem if you linked to something that is still in the Photrio galleries.
It is a good illustration, so it would be nice if Dave Miller could chime in.

 

[koraks]

You may not think much of it as a toned print and can see "flaws" in it

That's was not the message I attempted to convey. I'm merely pointing out it doesn't look like the gold toned prints I've made, that's all.

 

[pentaxuser]

That's was not the message I attempted to convey. I'm merely pointing out it doesn't look like the gold toned prints I've made, that's all.

It seemed to me that you were implying that what the originator achieved was, at best, highly unlikely and at worst virtually impossible, probably due to a "scanning artefact" which the originator had overlooked and presumably failed to see when he looked at his print and compared it to his scan or even worse had recognised that the print and scan of his prínt were different but chose not to correct it

If it is of any interest he did say that this was well used gold toner and was not saying that gold toner will unerringly produce this kind of blue every time

If you or Drew, for that matter, have never managed this kind of blue with gold toner then fine but that doesn't mean that someone else has not managed to do so

I will leave this matter as it is but with regrets that I even offered it as an example of what gold toner can do

pentaxuser

 

[koraks]

OK man, sorry you feel that way and all. I'll try to refrain from commenting on any examples you offer in the future.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The fact is, papers have changed. Graded chloride contact paper, for example, is nearly extinct. Therefore what might have produced a certain tone using an unspecified gold toning protocol could turn out to be a whole new challenge today.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Depends on the specific paper they used.

You can be subtle as long as everybody notices!

 

[DREW WILEY]

I almost always gold tone for a cooling effect, or sometimes seek a split tone in relation to other toners, like sulfide.
The manner in which I use of gold chloride is quite economical; some formulas seem to unnecessarily waste it like crazy.

But I already noted earlier, that I haven't been able to obtain an actual blueish effect with gold chloride since Polygrade V (combined with a personal developer tweak). But I don't like to take it that far anyway - maybe the barest hint of blue-black only. I also use gold toner to intensify the blacks, much like people use selenium toner; but I prefer the more neutral effect of gold chloride, rather than the sepia of selenium, though with certain papers I have used them in tandem (Harman Fineprint responded wonderfully to the pairing of both).