paper is turing pink

[annestehly]

Hi, I'm a beginner (well 2 years now) and I am used to drying my prints and seeing my mistakes, but this is a new one. A couple weeks after I made the prints, I was laying them out on the floor of a sunlit room and they started turning a soft shade of pink, as of now it doesn't seem to be getting worse. I'm thinking I didn't 'fix' it or rinse it long enough. It looks kinda cool actually--what I'm wondering is if they will continue to get worse, or if they will stay this way? I want to give one away but don't want to give a print that will deteriorate with time. I use Ultrafine Verigrade III RC glossy paper. I've learned a lot from all of you--thanks, Anne

 

[glbeas]

You are probably right, the fixer died. Fix is cheap enough you don't need to push its capacity. Theres also fix testers to determine if what you have is dead or not.

 

[annestehly]

thanks for the input, i'll be sure and toss my fixer--i should keep better track of how many prints i make with each batch.

 

[Brook]

If you use 2 fixer baths and test the first with fixer test fluid you will be pretty safe and wont have to count prints.

 

[ann]

they will continue to deteriorate; so if you are wanting to give them away, you probably will want to re-print.

 

[Ryuji]

Did the pink stuff come to the originally black area or originally white area?

If you treat that degraded print in Agfa Sistan or Fuji AG Guard, the print may stay
that way for some time, but I would not consider it to be archival or anything.

 

[gareth harper]

If you take a sheet of unprocessed MGIV RC and leave it under any light source it will turn pink. I'm guessing similar things happen with any other paper, but I've only ever done it with MGIV RC.

 

[Ole]

I have some ten year old poorly fixed prints on MG III RC where the highlight have turned a delicate pink. I refixed them carefully last year, and managed to preserve the colour by using long time in weak sodium thiosulfate fixer. Rapid fix can be used - if you want to remove the colour, try strong acidic rapid fix.

I decided to try to preserve it, since it wasn't too unappropriate on portraits.

 

[annestehly]

thanks everyone!!!