Retaining brown tones with Kallitypes

Hi all,

Very new to alternative process printing and trying to choose a process to try. Initially I decided Van Dyke Brown because I like the look but then found out that it requires gold toning for any kind of archival stability and gold toner is pretty expensive.

So then shifted to Kallitype. More involved but can be toned with much cheaper selenium. What I've noticed about selenium-toned Kallitypes is that they lose their brown tones and move much more towards black & white, some looking quite similar to silver gelatin prints. Is there a point with short toning time/highly dilute selenium toner that will add archival stability but retain the brown look?

Please feel free to let me know if any of that is incorrect!

Thanks.

You won’t get the color you want using selenium. You really ought to go with gold toner. The per-print cost really isn’t that much; you can tone an 8x10 Kallitype with as little as 5ml of gold chloride solution, and that simply isn't very costly.

Welcome to Photrio!

alexreltonb said:

What I've noticed about selenium-toned Kallitypes is that they lose their brown tones and move much more towards black & white, some looking quite similar to silver gelatin prints.

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That's odd; most of the time when you selenium tone prints like Kallitypes or Van Dykes, the result is a weaker/lighter brown and loss of dmax. Having the look shift towards that of silver gelatin I would actually consider as an advantage. Can you show an example of one of your prints where this happened?

Also, AFAIK there's no fundamental difference in archival stability between a Van Dyke and a Kallitype print. They're both rather sensitive to deterioration, but either process can be performed in a reasonably stable fashion provided the attention is spent on processing for archival purposes. Especially sufficient washing and indeed toning in a noble metal like gold as @retina_restoration suggests, or alternatively platinum or palladium. Gold is more common and generally more accessible; I personally also find it the prettier one of the bunch given the pleasant hues it can produce, ranging from a rich warm/red brown to a cool, almost-neutral somewhat purple hue.