Toning budget RC papers: Inkpress MultiTone vs Arista/Foma Fomaspeed

dcy · 2025-07-21T05:01:15-0400

EDIT: Apparently for some viewers the images are all on one row. I have re-labeled them so they can be identified.

I have been experimenting with sepia and selenium toning with the cheapest RC papers in the market and I wanted to share my impressions:

(1) Inkpress MultiTone responds A LOT more strongly to sepia toning than Arista / Foma.

I don't know if Arista paper is merely a rebrand of Fomaspeed, but it's made by Foma, so it should at least be "similar". In the images below, the left column (railway sign) are Inkpress MultiTone RC Pearl while the right column (building) are Arista EDU Ultra RC Semi-Matte. ~~The top row are split-tones with sepia and selenium.~~

I don't know if my cellphone photos convey the difference, but in person it's unmistakable. MultiTone responds immediately to sepia and quickly acquires a strong sepia tone, whereas for Arista/Foma, I fought and fought and fought and could not get it to actually look sepia. I left the print in the bleach until both the highlights and midtones were gone and the shadows starting to disappear too, and yet when they came back in the sepia bath they just look "meh".

(2) Neither paper responds well to selenium toning.

~~The bottom row is selenium.~~ If you hold a toned and untoned print side by side and squint really hard you can detect an increase in Dmax and a slight shift in tone. It is easier to see with the Arista/Foma paper, but the difference is small enough that I'm not sure whether it's the paper or whether the photo with the building is just better suited for selenium, or whether my mind is interpreting the darker sky as "more selenium".

I definitely want to try toning with better paper. When my current stack of RC paper starts to run low, I'm planning to order (a) Ilford RC Cooltone and (b) some FB paper to try.

Honestly, I'm quite disappointed with Arista/Foma RC paper. It costs twice as much as MultiTone, yet performs much worse with sepia, is not clearly better for selenium, and in another recent thread we found that it falls apart a lot more easily when confronted with a poor developer.

As a side-note, I think the photos on the right are sharper. I hope they are. They were taken with a better camera (Pentax 17 vs Olympus PEN) with a sharp lens and modern coatings and more precise focus, and were enlarged with a better lens (Nikkor vs Spiratone). Recently there was a forum discussion about why the pictures on the left appear a bit soft. Some of the proposed culprits were the camera lens and the enlarger lens.

Left: Inkpress MultiTone RC Pearl
Right: RC Semi-Matte
Top: Split Tone (Sepia + Selenium)
Bottom: Selenium Tone

Inkpress MultiTone + Split Tone

Arista (Foma) + Split Tone

Inkpress MultiTone + Selenium Tone

Arista (Foma) + Selenium Tone

koraks · 2025-07-21T05:45:26-0400

dcy said:
The bottom row is selenium.

They're all on one row for me. How can we identify which image is which print?

I disagree that fomaspeed doesn't respond well to selenium toning. For me, it gives a distinct boost in shadow density and shifts the tone a bit towards neutral. I find that subtle selenium toning improves the print significantly, on the whole. In some cases, the eggplant hue of deeper selenium toning I personally also find attractive, but many people dislike the magenta coloration. You toned these pretty far, it seems. Again, I quite like that hue, but it's not everyone's taste.

None of your prints show a good dmax, however. The blacks are all pretty weak.

dcy · 2025-07-21T06:27:33-0400

koraks said:
They're all on one row for me. How can we identify which image is which print?

Oops.

I have now put each print on its own row with a proper label.

koraks said:
In some cases, the eggplant hue of deeper selenium toning I personally also find attractive, but many people dislike the magenta coloration.

I've seen a couple of examples of the eggplant hue and I thought they looked nice. I haven't seen that color in my own prints yet.

koraks said:
None of your prints show a good dmax, however. The blacks are all pretty weak.

I was thinking the same thing. I wasn't 100% sure because I don't have a reference point, but I've been struggling with Dmax. My current best guess is bad developer. Next time I print I'm going to use the Ilford multigrade developer I just bought. Comparing the results with a freshly bought good quality developer will allow me to either confirm it's the developer or rule out that option.

koraks · 2025-07-21T07:04:36-0400

Yeah, tired/too dilute developer or too brief a developing time are the likely culprits. The papers will respond differently (and generally less strongly) to toning if you develop them out further. You end up with bigger silver particles that are less receptive to toning. The effect will be subtle and/or you may have to bleach or tone more strongly (longer, less dilute) to get a similar result, and even then, it won't be quite the same.

dcy · 2025-07-21T20:21:34-0400

koraks said:
I disagree that fomaspeed doesn't respond well to selenium toning... In some cases, the eggplant hue of deeper selenium toning I personally also find attractive, but many people dislike the magenta coloration. You toned these pretty far, it seems.

Are you talking about selenium? I was trying to tone as strongly as I could, but I still have to squint to see the selenium.

Sepia toning is easily evident with both papers, but I wasn't happy with the color I got with fomaspeed.

koraks said:
The papers will respond differently (and generally less strongly) to toning if you develop them out further. You end up with bigger silver particles that are less receptive to toning.

So if I fix the Dmax with a stronger developer I'm going to lose what toning I currently have?

koraks · 2025-07-22T01:45:09-0400

dcy said:
Are you talking about selenium?

Yes, those. They turned out quite purple.
Selenium is a direct toner, which generally is more subtle than an indirect toner that starts with bleaching the prints.

dcy said:
So if I fix the Dmax with a stronger developer I'm going to lose what toning I currently have?

Yes, indeed.

GregY · 2025-07-22T11:42:07-0400

dcy said:
EDIT: Apparently for some viewers the images are all on one row. I have re-labeled them so they can be identified.

I have been experimenting with sepia and selenium toning with the cheapest RC papers in the market and I wanted to share my impressions:

(1) Inkpress MultiTone responds A LOT more strongly to sepia toning than Arista / Foma.

I don't know if Arista paper is merely a rebrand of Fomaspeed, but it's made by Foma, so it should at least be "similar". In the images below, the left column (railway sign) are Inkpress MultiTone RC Pearl while the right column (building) are Arista EDU Ultra RC Semi-Matte. ~~The top row are split-tones with sepia and selenium.~~

I don't know if my cellphone photos convey the difference, but in person it's unmistakable. MultiTone responds immediately to sepia and quickly acquires a strong sepia tone, whereas for Arista/Foma, I fought and fought and fought and could not get it to actually look sepia. I left the print in the bleach until both the highlights and midtones were gone and the shadows starting to disappear too, and yet when they came back in the sepia bath they just look "meh".

(2) Neither paper responds well to selenium toning.

~~The bottom row is selenium.~~ If you hold a toned and untoned print side by side and squint really hard you can detect an increase in Dmax and a slight shift in tone. It is easier to see with the Arista/Foma paper, but the difference is small enough that I'm not sure whether it's the paper or whether the photo with the building is just better suited for selenium, or whether my mind is interpreting the darker sky as "more selenium".

I definitely want to try toning with better paper. When my current stack of RC paper starts to run low, I'm planning to order (a) Ilford RC Cooltone and (b) some FB paper to try.

Honestly, I'm quite disappointed with Arista/Foma RC paper. It costs twice as much as MultiTone, yet performs much worse with sepia, is not clearly better for selenium, and in another recent thread we found that it falls apart a lot more easily when confronted with a poor developer.

As a side-note, I think the photos on the right are sharper. I hope they are. They were taken with a better camera (Pentax 17 vs Olympus PEN) with a sharp lens and modern coatings and more precise focus, and were enlarged with a better lens (Nikkor vs Spiratone). Recently there was a forum discussion about why the pictures on the left appear a bit soft. Some of the proposed culprits were the camera lens and the enlarger lens.

Left: Inkpress MultiTone RC Pearl
Right: RC Semi-Matte
Top: Split Tone (Sepia + Selenium)
Bottom: Selenium Tone

Inkpress MultiTone + Split Tone
View attachment 403605

Arista (Foma) + Split Tone
View attachment 403606

Inkpress MultiTone + Selenium Tone
View attachment 403607

Arista (Foma) + Selenium Tone
View attachment 403608

dcy, just like trying different films / developers...toning can be an interesting rabbit hole.
But toners aren't necessarily meant to be applied like a heavy hammer. Yes it depends what you like.... but many papers have characteristics that get masked by heavy toning. That's my opinion anyway.... & selenium toner....for example can add something without totally overpowering an image.... See how your tastes change over time.

dcy · 2025-07-22T12:21:22-0400

GregY said:
But toners aren't necessarily meant to be applied like a heavy hammer. Yes it depends what you like.... but many papers have characteristics that get masked by heavy toning. That's my opinion anyway.... & selenium toner....for example can add something without totally overpowering an image.... See how your tastes change over time.

What I find odd is that you and koraks seem to agree that the selenium toning is strong whereas I feel I can barely even see it. My wife and I did the toning together and we both have to look closely to even notice it. Especially for the MultiTone example. For MultiTone we have to look at the prints from just the right angle + just the right light to notice the color shift.

Here is a photo I just took of two prints with the Arista paper. This is the one that responded most strongly to toning. On the left, I'm holding an untoned print that I rejected. On the right, is the one I toned and put in my album. Do you think the print on the right is strongly toned? --- I mean... in theory it should be. I blasted it with the highest dose of selenium in Kodak's suggested range, but to me the effect looks mild.

pentaxuser · 2025-07-22T12:34:55-0400

If it is any help,dcy, the only tíme I have seen prints toned in selenium have this quite pronounced pink look was in an Ilford video on its selenium toner diluted at 1+3 which is extremely strong.Just out of interest what was your dilution in the selenium prints you did ?

Here it is

pentaxuser

GregY · 2025-07-22T12:35:49-0400

dcy..... it's hard to tell.... on my screen both images show a pinkish cast, but there is more contrast in the right hand image. Like anything else in photography..... the 10,000 hrs rule applies. Years from now, you'll be using different paper and will look back on your own journey and make comparisons.
As I mentioned, many photographers employ toning to gain subtle effects. Here's a photo by Jay Dusard (The cover of his "The American Cowboy: A Portrait")...... I have both the book and an original silver gelatin print. Jay tones his prints & one of his favourite papers around the time was Fortezo ( a beautiful slightly warm graded paper).....the toning meant to enhance the print & for its archival properties.
A dilution of 1:19 is common....& in the future....you'll see things you don't see now.....that's part of the journey.

Google Search

dcy · 2025-07-22T13:01:49-0400

pentaxuser said:
If it is any help,dcy, the only tíme I have seen prints toned in selenium have this quite pronounced pink look was in an Ilford video on its selenium toner diluted at 1+3 which is extremely strong.Just out of interest what was your dilution in the selenium prints you did ?

Same dilution. I used 1+3, both because I saw it in that video and because I wanted to make sure I'd see something.

MattKing · 2025-07-22T13:07:01-0400

Most general purpose, relatively low cost RC papers have engineered into them a whole bunch of enforced consistency. That way they give similar results in a wide variety of darkrooms, to a wide variety of users.
That built in consistency tends to make them relatively resistant to toning.
You seem to have picked two papers that show that resistance.
It is the interaction between the paper makeup and the toner that gives you the result. And you really can't apply experience gained with one paper to predict how another might behave.
It is part of the sometimes frustrating unpredictable fun of toning!
A change in type of developer often has some effect as well.

dcy · 2025-07-22T13:15:28-0400

GregY said:
dcy..... it's hard to tell.... on my screen both images show a pinkish cast, but there is more contrast in the right hand image.

Oh. That's my mistake. I didn't think about the color cast of the light source. My indoor lights have a warm tone. Here's a new photo I took in my patio. The positions of the photos have switched because I am balancing the album with one hand. The day is overcast, but the lighting should at least be mostly neutral.

Left: Selenium toned (1+3).
Right: Untoned.

GregY said:
Like anything else in photography..... the 10,000 hrs rule applies. ....& in the future....you'll see things you don't see now.....that's part of the journey.

Yeah. As time goes by I will notice things more and will have better materials. Thanks for the help!

dcy · 2025-07-22T13:25:02-0400

MattKing said:
Most general purpose, relatively low cost RC papers have engineered into them a whole bunch of enforced consistency. That way they give similar results in a wide variety of darkrooms, to a wide variety of users.
That built in consistency tends to make them relatively resistant to toning.
You seem to have picked two papers that show that resistance.
It is the interaction between the paper makeup and the toner that gives you the result. And you really can't apply experience gained with one paper to predict how another might behave.
It is part of the sometimes frustrating unpredictable fun of toning!
A change in type of developer often has some effect as well.

Yeah. I'm quite enjoying the process of toning --- learning how to do it and how papers react to it. My second toning session went a lot more smoothly than my first.

I started out buying a sampling of the cheapest papers in the market because I figured I'd be making a lot of mistakes. At this point I think I have a good feel for how the cheap RC papers behave and I am wasting less paper in the darkroom. Next time I buy paper I'm going to get Foma FB Variant III and Ilford RC Cooltone so I can branch out and see what better papers look like.

pentaxuser · 2025-07-22T14:31:14-0400

dcy said:
Same dilution. I used 1+3, both because I saw it in that video and because I wanted to make sure I'd see something.

Thanks Yes it's an expensive use of selenium at 1+3 but it gets you that quite unique pinkish look which IMO certainly improves the portrait in the video

pentaxuser

Paul Howell · 2025-07-22T14:42:25-0400

I use Multitone for 1st generation work prints, which I seldom bother to tone. I do use selenium with Foma RC for the archival value, not to change tone, and with Foma FB when I want to change the tone. I have not use ILford paper in a very long time, 20 years or longer, but although expensive and sometimes hard to find in the U.S I find that Berrger tones really well.

GregY · 2025-07-22T14:48:01-0400

Paul Howell said:
I use Multitone for 1st generation work prints, which I seldom bother to tone. I do use selenium with Foma RC for the archival value, not to change tone, and with Foma FB when I want to change the tone. I have not use ILford paper in a very long time, 20 years or longer, but although expensive and sometimes hard to find in the U.S I find that Berrger tones really well.

Today's Ilford tones better than the versions from 10+ yrs ago. But the long gone Galerie was a beautiful paper to print on, even if if didn't tone much.

Toning budget RC papers: Inkpress MultiTone vs Arista/Foma Fomaspeed

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