Spotting 'fun': Why does Neutral Black look blue?

logan2z · Mar 27, 2024

I'm spotting some prints made on Ilford Multigrade Classic fiber glossy paper for an upcoming exhibition. I'm using the three-bottle package of Marshall Spot-All dyes which includes a 'Neutral Black' dye. I figured that would be the best choice given the tone of this paper, but I'm finding that 'Neutral Black' actually looks very blue, especially when thinned out in an attempt to match lighter tones. My bottles are 4+ years old and this is the first time I'm using them so I'm wondering if this blue tint is 'normal' for Marshall's 'Neutral Black' or if my dyes have somehow gone 'off'. Maybe mixing in some 'Selenium Brown' will give me a more neutral gray tone. Surprised at how blue this 'Neutral Black' dye is, not exactly what I was expecting given its name.

koraks · Mar 27, 2024

Neutral grey can look very cool if your reference is warm. Most silver gelatin emulsions are on the warm side, so I wouldn't be surprised if your neutral black looks a little cool if you're spotting silver gelatin prints. Moreover, getting a dead-neutral grey is pretty difficult, so it's quite possible that your Marshall dye really is on the blue side.

logan2z · Mar 27, 2024

koraks said:
Most silver gelatin emulsions are on the warm side, so I wouldn't be surprised if your neutral black looks a little cool if you're spotting silver gelatin prints.

It looks pretty blue - not just when applied to the print, but in the palette too. Maybe I was being too optimistic thinking that I could get away with just using the 'Neutral Black' without having to mix in some of the other dyes to achieve the correct tone. Thank goodness this stuff seems to wash out pretty easily by soaking the print in water for a short time.

jeffreyg · Mar 27, 2024

Just checked my spotting supplies. I have some Spotones and Marshells red green blue and yellow. I put a couple of drops on a white porcelain palette and mix off to the side then test on a piece of proscessed paper next to the spot I want to correct. Time consuming but it works Better than rewashing drying and starting over.

logan2z · Mar 27, 2024

jeffreyg said:
Just checked my spotting supplies. I have some Spotones and Marshells red green blue and yellow. I put a couple of drops on a white porcelain palette and mix off to the side then test on a piece of proscessed paper next to the spot I want to correct. Time consuming but it works Better than rewashing drying and starting over.

That's exactly my methodology, although I still do sometimes misjudge the tone on the darkish side and end up needing to rewash - especially when the spot is in a light grey, featureless area like a cloudless sky.

Mark J · Mar 27, 2024

I found something similar spotting FB with the Cibachrome spotting pack, which is all I've got. I've sometimes mixed a little of the yellow-brown one into the black, to get it to match more accurately.

bedrof · Mar 27, 2024

I got the same problem with the Spot-All dyes as an OP.
Tried a Diaphoto one from fotoimpex, that looked a bit more neutral but also on the bluish side.

logan2z · Mar 27, 2024

Mark J said:
I found something similar spotting FB with the Cibachrome spotting pack, which is all I've got. I've sometimes mixed a little of the yellow-brown one into the black, to get it to match more accurately.

Thanks for sharing that.

I just mixed a tiny bit of Selenium Brown into the Neutral Black and that has given me a much better result.

MattKing · Mar 27, 2024

Wait until the spotting has dried before you evaluate the tone!

Doremus Scudder · Mar 27, 2024

I use my very old collection of Spotone dyes, which are similar to the Marshall's. I always have to mix up the exact right tone for my prints. I use different mixes of neutral, "selenium" (redder) and "sepia" (greener/yellower/browner), plus whatever else I need to get the right tone.

I have a couple of palettes with six wells each. One pure color of the above goes into three wells, then I use the other three to mix what I need. I use distilled water to thin the colors to the density I need. After spotting, I just let the dyes dry out. They are easily reconstituted with a bit of distilled water for the next spotting session.

Best,

Doremus

Don_ih · Mar 27, 2024

My bottle of Marshall black is a good match for all of my fb paper (except the warmtone paper). It has no blue tinge to it. It's also I-don't-know how old -- I got it with a bunch of other stuff.

logan2z · Mar 27, 2024

Don_ih said:
It has no blue tinge to it.

Hmm, mine is definitely blue-ish. It looks pretty black straight out of the bottle but gets pretty blue when thinned down to spot lighter tones.

pentaxuser · Mar 27, 2024

logan2z said:
Hmm, mine is definitely blue-ish. It looks pretty black straight out of the bottle but gets pretty blue when thinned down to spot lighter tones.

Can I ask, just out of curiosity, have you confirmed this bluish look from other people as well who have viewed the print?

pentaxuser

DREW WILEY · Mar 27, 2024

Perhaps mislabeled? I doubt that. Every bottle of Spot Tone Neutral Black I've personally encountered, even under the subsequent Marshall label after Marshall bought them out, was indeed neutral black. There was an entirely different flavor of it called Blue Black, with that particular look. But Marshall also had, and still has, their own separate line of dyes, which differ, confusing this subject somewhat.

Age has nothing to do with it. I have bottles over 30 yr old which haven't shifted.

More likely, you need to realize that you simply can't obtain a neutral black with MG Classic unless you've deliberately gold chloride toned it to be a little cooler. Selenium actually warms your blacks further. Therefore what you think is "neutral" when viewing a Classic MG print is actually warm in comparison to Neutral Black dye, which looks deceptively"bluish" to you simply due to the normal physiological effect of simultaneous color contrast. Therefore you need a little bit of Selnium Brown dye added to the Neutral Black to match the dark areas of the print.

Keep in mind that what paper manufacturers label as "neutral tone" hints at how they can be leveraged somewhat warmer or cooler, depending on the specific development and toning regimen. But to a dye manufacturer, "neutral" as in Neutral Black makes reference to when true cold tone paper were commonly used. That would also apply to Ilford Multigrade Cooltone paper, but not to Classic.

The quality of your viewing and retouching light also factors in.

logan2z · Mar 27, 2024

DREW WILEY said:
Therefore you need a little bit of Selnium Brown dye added to the Neutral Black to match the dark areas of the print.

Yes, that's what I ended up doing and the tonal match is much better.

George Collier · Mar 28, 2024

Observation of any color can be affected by nearby or surrounding other colors, which create a visual environment around the color being observed. It's called the adjacency affect and is nearly if not impossible to avoid.

Mark J · Mar 28, 2024

Yes, but this is the whole aim of spotting, you want the colour to match the surrounding print.

DREW WILEY · Mar 28, 2024

Adjacency effect is easy to avoid if one is aware of what comprises it. Any decent retouching station or color matching booth requires a high CRI light source and should be free from any strong colors in the vicinity. I have a black laminate background.

Retouching color prints is inherently more complex because distracting colors might be present in the print itself. But if necessary, you can cover areas you're not specifically working on with a sheet of neutral paper.

It all gets pretty easy with experience. Much of the process involves progressively training yourself to see subtle differences in color, even in black and white image tones.

Augustus Caesar · Mar 28, 2024

I don't use liquid dyes for spotting. They tend to run, making it difficult to maintain sharp edges. This is especially true for glossy paper. Instead, I use a very soft lead pencil, which works far better.

snusmumriken · Mar 29, 2024

Augustus Caesar said:
I don't use liquid dyes for spotting. They tend to run, making it difficult to maintain sharp edges. This is especially true for glossy paper. Instead, I use a very soft lead pencil, which works far better.

If pencil works well for you, that's all that matters. But I humbly suggest that if you find liquid dyes inclined to run, you are using far too much dye on your brush ... and/or trying to mend too large a spot in one hit. I find it helps to soften the spot (taking care not stray over its edges) with a very small amount of water before using any dye, and to use the dye diluted to a tone weaker than the tone one is ultimately aiming for.

DREW WILEY · Mar 29, 2024

There's nothing permanent about pencil. It all sits on the surface. And how do you actually match the exact tonal hue of the print itself using a smudge pencil? Spotting with dyes is all about gently building up just the right amount of density by applying just a little at a time. You don't want a puddle.

Lachlan Young · Mar 29, 2024

Some of the current 'neutral black' dyes do seem to have a tendency to split into something rather purple if they aren't used carefully. On the other hand they might be safer than Spot Tone was reputed to be.

Vaughn · Mar 29, 2024

Glad you found a good color mix!

Good old Spotone 3! I got pretty good at spotting and enjoyed seeing a print 'magically' clean up. Spotone 3 was a good match to the graded Gallerie. I'd mix 3 drops of the #3 with one drop of Sepia for my Portriga Rapid 111. Both papers selenium toned. The Portriga Rapid changed its color radically based on the amount of selenium toning, so I had to watch the timing carefully. If toned too far, the paper went purple instead of the rich red/brown that I wanted. Untoned, Portriga Rapid tended to a bit on the greenish side.

The Ilford graded Gallerie would just shift to a more neutral color (and 'cleaner' to my eyes) and stay there. So many other factors involved in print color (developer, amount of development, etc). Good to have an extra print to test colors on!

I've done very little silver gelatin printing the last 30 years...but I have stored prints that might need at few dust spots to disappear if I decide to mat one. And I use it to touch up a platinum or carbon print occasionally, which come in a wide range of tones. So it is nice still having a small stash of the old Spotone, and my 000 brush.

DREW WILEY · Mar 29, 2024

The oddball is Olive Tone. I needed that for Portriga gone greenish in Dektol, or nowadays, as an ingredient combined with other dyes to match lighter portions of split-toned MGWT prints.

Wherever on the bottom shelf the last of my ancient packs of Dektol are located probably won't be discovered unless some archaeologist several centuries hence is digging through earthquake rubble. I haven't used any of that particular developer in the past 30 years.

logan2z · Mar 29, 2024

Just happened to look at some reviews of the Marshall Neutral Black spotting dye on BH and found these (among others with the same complaint):

Mixing with Selenium Brown certainly did give me a better match for my prints and I'm pretty happy with the results.

Spotting 'fun': Why does Neutral Black look blue?

logan2z

koraks

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logan2z

jeffreyg

logan2z

Mark J

bedrof

logan2z

MattKing

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Doremus Scudder

Don_ih

logan2z

pentaxuser

DREW WILEY

logan2z

George Collier

Mark J

DREW WILEY

Augustus Caesar

snusmumriken

DREW WILEY

Lachlan Young

Vaughn

DREW WILEY

logan2z

Spotting 'fun': Why does Neutral Black look blue?

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