Recommend me a developer?

[AFlood]

Hi Folks,

Ive been doing a lot of two bath lith prints lately: Using LD20 as the the first bath to get lovely gritty shadows, then using an extremely week dilution of 'normal' print developer to obtain more subtle highlights. The effect can be quite beautiful. I'm using ilford multigrade dev because its the only 'normal' dev i have, its not ideally suited to the purpose of producing delicate highlights.

What I'm after is an ultra soft developer that can produce delicate and detailed highlights, but is much slower working in shadows and midtones...
Any suggestions, or am I looking for something that doesnt exist?

Thanks,
Alex

 

[Tom Kershaw]

If you're up to mixing your own developers try ID-3, otherwise Tetenal do a soft working liquid developer, and Silverprint appear to have a special offer on Agfa Adaptol.

Tom

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Zonal Pro warm tone, which is basically Ansco 120, is a very soft working developer.

Interesting idea with a split lith/regular developer.

 

[AFlood]

Working from my bedroom and bath/darkroom space and storage is a bit of a problem, so I think I'll try the Agfa Adaptol at this stage.
I like using a two bath lith process, the results can be much more subtle then a straight lith print.
Most the time I'm not a fan of super warmtone images anyway and using a second dev bath most of the color is removed from the print, leaving lovely 'putty' and 'mushroom' coloured highlights.
Thanks for your suggestions