Keeping lith color after toning

I love the pinkish colors I get when the lith bath is ripe, nearing exhausted.

I made a high-key print, lots of sky and clouds and it was perfect when it dried, but I wanted it to be archival.

So I selinium toned it about four minutes 1:18 KRST.

And it seemed to not only take away the color and make the picture look fairly normal if a little grainy, but it also took away some of the highlight details in the clouds.

Now, I have remade the lith print and it's the lovely pink color with wonderful highlights. I want to keep it that way but make it archival.

Any recommendations?

I have Tim Rudman's book on lith printing. When he talks about the colors you can get from lith developing, he says that you can keep it that way, or explore more coloration with toners. I'm paraphrasing but that's effectively what he says. But maybe there's a page I'm overlooking that deals with this?

Cheers,
Phil

Phil,
Selenium kills the colors in lith. Or use it very diluted and / or for a very short time. 4 minutes is too long, more like 30 sec max.
You can bleach and tone to keep some of the original colors. But thes high keys colors will only stay if you dońt do anything.

Guillaume Zuili said:

Phil,
Selenium kills the colors in lith. Or use it very diluted and / or for a very short time. 4 minutes is too long, more like 30 sec max.
You can bleach and tone to keep some of the original colors. But thes high keys colors will only stay if you dońt do anything.

Click to expand...

It actually depends on paper and how you use it. In my last lith experiment I toned a sheet of Fomatone lith print in hot selenium. At first it does kill colors, but if you wait long enough, rich deep brown starts to appear in shadows slowly making it to highlights. Depending on paper, you can get an amazing combination of 2-3 colors. I actually love the beautiful brown you can get by fully toning a Fomatone print in selenium. How I wish I could replicate such tone with non-lith prints!

Eugene.

Guillaume Zuili said:

Phil,
Selenium kills the colors in lith. Or use it very diluted and / or for a very short time. 4 minutes is too long, more like 30 sec max.
You can bleach and tone to keep some of the original colors. But thes high keys colors will only stay if you dońt do anything.

Click to expand...

Thanks for this. Do you have any experience with sufide/sepia or gold? How do they handle the highlight color?

anikin said:

It actually depends on paper and how you use it. In my last lith experiment I toned a sheet of Fomatone lith print in hot selenium. At first it does kill colors, but if you wait long enough, rich deep brown starts to appear in shadows slowly making it to highlights. Depending on paper, you can get an amazing combination of 2-3 colors. I actually love the beautiful brown you can get by fully toning a Fomatone print in selenium. How I wish I could replicate such tone with non-lith prints!

Eugene.

Click to expand...

This might be something for me to experiment with. Thanks!

I don't lith print, but how about Sistan? No color change to normal prints.

K

Phil,
If you want to keep the colors of your highlights intact it is better to not tone at all or use selenium for a very short time (with the risk to loose them if you go too far) or use Sistan as Kobin said.

Now if you want to play with toning possibilities are endless.
My goal with lith printing is to get tri tones.
1) weak bleach and sepia for highlights
2) selenium for blacks
3) mid tones colors from lith.
And you can alter in many ways.
Selenium first then complete wash then bleach and sepia or polysulfide will give another complete color shif.
Gold after selenium gives beautiful colors too. It's endless

But I insist if you love the colors in the first place, especially these highlights colors... Leave them that way. I know full well how frustrating it can be when you see them vanish in the toner or after drying...
G.

This is my experience as well. When i selenium toned my fomatone lith prints it killed them. Tried different dilutions and the only question is how long it took before the prints were murdered. I decided to not tone them. They look great and i leave them alone.

pstake said:

Thanks for this. Do you have any experience with sufide/sepia or gold? How do they handle the highlight color?

Click to expand...

I gold tone a lot of lithprints, usually I go with Selenium first (1:60), then gold. It gives warm, brown blacks and cold blue in the higher tones. I love this combo.

If you only gold tone, you'll keep the highlights as far as I remember.

Thanks, everyone. I'm leaving it as-is for now but I'm going to investigate Sistan.

By the way, here is the print, fresh from the drying rack.

If you like the color, don't tone. Weak selenium toning with little color change means very little toning. If you want pinks in the highlights with toning, the only way to do that I know is sepia (short, dilute bleach for highlights only) then gold. It is very nice, but only will tone the highlights. I wouldn't stress about archival-ness. Better to get the look you want.

BTW - selenium can look nice with lith if you let it go to completion......flat grays if you partially tone with most papers.

archival Lith prints

If we don't tone lith prints to make them archival, then do un-toned lith prints not change colour over time? I'm just starting out in Lith.