questions with lith and toning.

fairly new to printing in general but once I finally started using film I have always been interested in lith printing. I'm just about to push the button and buy some lith developer but I'm kind of stuck right now between couple of products. The first is Moersch Easylith, and the other is Rollei Vintage Creative Superlith and also some arista premium lith. the moersch I can find the most info on and it was the one I was about to buy but the other two product are making me second guess in some ways mainly due to you get twice the product at about the same price. plus I need to pick up some paper (preferably a warmer tone though at this point I will take just about anything) for use in this as well but trying to keep everything on the cheap side for the time being at least until I get a little better control over what I'm doing. once I can get things down though I would be willing to buy better paper but for now, well I hope you can understand.

when it comes to toning a print what happens if you use a warm toner like selenium, sepia or such on a cold style paper or vise versa using iron or gold on a warmtone paper? does the toner overpower the natual tone of the paper or do they work together to create a image with changing tone?

Before you second-guess developers, toners and papers try to read Tim Rudman's two books: "The Master Photographer's Lith Printing Course" (ISBN:1 90253802 1) and "The Photographer's Toning Book" (ISBN: 0-8174-5765-9). Some of the product information will be out of date as papers and developers come and go, so access his website www.timrudman.com for updates.

These books are an excellent guide, but the nature of the "lith monster" will rarely give you the results you expect. That's the fun of the process.


If you stay playing around with any old paper that is known as a no-go for lith, then you are just wasting time and money.

If cost is an issue at all, the most economical thing you can do is buy those two books.

My favorite developer is the Rollei diluted about 1:1:50 plus 20-30% old brown (left over developer from the previous session). I also use the Arista sometimes, but I don't like the formaldehyde in it. The Arista tends to have more subdued colors for me. For paper, I'd recommend Fomatone as it is easy to lith and you can manipulate it to give many colors. If you really want to keep costs down, Slavich Unibrom grade 3 is cheap, but it is very grainy and closer to a neutral tone. Lith is naturally colorful and selenium usually drives the tones to be more neutral.....works well with some prints. With lith, experimentation is key. Take a look at the gallery or flicker for examples. And Tim Rudman's Lith book is a must. The materials info is pretty out of date, but you can sign up on Tim's website for an updated material list. Also, Tim has an article on unblinkingeye.com which provides the basics of lith printing

Lith Development and Contrast Control

I've done only a little lith printing myself but
have read that lith development offers at least
a few grades of control from one grade of paper.
You may wish to consider using a Graded paper.
The high level of lighting afforded by graded
paper makes it easy to see when to 'snatch'.
I recall leaving my usual safelights on
during the entire development.

I see by another recent thread that Slavich paper
liths well. Slavich is a very inexpensive paper
available from Freestyle. SW & DW. I'm
working with it right now. Dan

Sign up for Tim Rudman's monthly newsletter as well. You can find it by using the google.

you say that you are "fairly new to printing." If you don't yet have a really good handle on straight silver printing, I recommend you not branch out into lith printing yet. Spend your time and money learning to use 1 print developer and 1 paper, and making consistently great traditional prints. Then you can build on that knowledge to begin incorporating toning, and later still, lith printing into your repertoire.

I echo the suggestions above to get Dr. Rudman's books to begin learning about toning and lith printing. Your comment that you will "take just about any" paper implies that you don't yet understand the lith process very well. Only a few papers will lith print well, and those that will lith produce different results. Someone mentioned Foma paper, which is my favorite for colorful lith. Someone else mentioned Slavich, which I have used as well, but to produce a completely different result. Those papers both lith well, but are not interchangeable. I am afraid that if you try to lith with "just any paper" you will be frustrated by not getting the results that you want, and you will not understand why.

Good luck!
Dan

I understand that some papers lith better then others and some will give different results then others as well. I have seen some lith work,papers that I don't really care for and will easily admit to that. my logic at the time though is just to be able to take a paper and at least get comfortable with the lith process. even if it isn't quite the look I am wantingstill to be able ot work with the process I thought at least be helpfull in some ways rather then buying expensive papers and wasting them on mistakes.

will head down to the library though see if they have that book around

if u r new to lith, i would recommend to take a bit of control and understanding of the processes first, and only later to add the toning processes.
Fomatone and Fotospeed papers are great. learn and experience how paper choice, exposure and developer condition effect the "look" of lith.
then toning will be much easier to manage. also, unless u do not mount your prints, u can always tone later... and even test toning processes on prints u dont like.

sorry should of clarified a bit. the toning question wasn't quite specific to lith itself just more of a hopefull it could be a general question there.

since I did have to get an order from freestyle anyway though (out of film and developer) figured might as well throw in some rollei developer and unibrom paper. at least it is cheap enough to play with to hopefully get an idea of the process without costing me a lot for all the mistakes I'm sure to make.

still going to look into getting taht book at the library around here though to see what info I can gather from there.

thank you all.

The OP Has That In Mind

Dan Henderson said:

Spend your time and money learning to use 1 print
developer and 1 paper, .... Dan

Click to expand...

The OP has is looking for 1 lith print developer and
1 paper which will work well with that 1 developer.

What if there were only lith development? How would
you know where to start. Suppose the method is much
used and that there are a variety of products on the
market, products with instructions and many who
are willing to share their experience.

Books written on the subject are a good addition
to the information already available via this NG and
others. They offer additional depth, detail, and tricks
of the trade. The $30 to $40 investment though
should not be a hurdle. Dan

Note: If you do combine Lith and Toning, lithing certain papers will provide an interesting result with Selenium.

If you really want to see a variety of lith prints on different papers, try hivemind. Type in the search terms you want (e.g. slavich lith) and you can see a variety of those sorts of prints. Pretty cool.