Toning with tea and coffee

abhishek@1985 · Jun 12, 2014

Hi,

I finally got my hands on some Ilford Ar 300 paper and printed about 7 images. Slowly building up my porfolio of portraits . But its so exciting for a newbie like me .
However, I wanna try some toning and looking for non-toxic hassel free toners and hence inclined towards tea and coffee. Ofcourse I understand that they are more like stainers than real toners.
Wanna see some examples of both and wanna hear from all you experienced guys on tea and coffee toning. And what do you prefer ..

Regards,
Abhishek

removed account4 · Jun 12, 2014

ive never toned with tea or coffee but with reed dye purchased at a craft shop.
it worked great and was as non toxic as it gets ... i dont have any examples of the photographs, they were all 16/20 prints, never scanned or digitized ...
it took a long while to tone so if you go that route remember it takes time ...

Richard Jepsen · Jun 12, 2014

I would not recommend toning with tea or coffee. The image will have an overall stain without the intensification selenium offers. A few of the Foma papers would provide an overall brown tint if that's the effect you want.

Using prepared selenium toner is not toxic if handled properly.

MattKing · Jun 12, 2014

Using tea or coffee is really more akin to using dye than using toner.

removed account4 · Jun 12, 2014

Richard Jepsen said:
I would not recommend toning with tea or coffee. The image will have an overall stain without the intensification selenium offers. A few of the Foma papers would provide an overall brown tint if that's the effect you want.

Using prepared selenium toner is not toxic if handled properly.

some people, dont like working with toners like selenium. it isnt just "handling" the powder that requires concern
the toner (liquid) itself is a toxin, and when you rinse it off that nasty stuff goes into the water supply.

Newt_on_Swings · Jun 13, 2014

I've done staining with coffee and tea and food coloring in my classes that I teach to kids. It works well only on fiber papers, you can soak a rc print for a day and a night and only the edges get stained. The stains only affect the white areas of the print and don't change the blacks. Both strong coffee and tea produce a yellowing of the paper instead of brown shades. Dark red wine stains it pinkish. Prints do smell really good afterwards when they dry.

Blighty · Jun 13, 2014

I use tea tinting on many of my prints esp. RC paper. I find it mellows that brilliant white and imparts an attractive almost split-tone feel. It's true that RC doesn't take up the tea as well as FB papers but it still does stain the entire print although there is a tendency for the edges to tint stronger. Personally, this isn't an issue for me especially if you can minimise the irregular take-up of the tea in the first place - cooler temps work best for this. I also print with wide borders so that on the odd occasion that irregular staining occurs, I can trim the borders back a bit.

Rudeofus · Jun 13, 2014

Newt_on_Swings said:
The stains only affect the white areas of the print and don't change the blacks. Both strong coffee and tea produce a yellowing of the paper instead of brown shades. Dark red wine stains it pinkish.

I think that is the key difference between tea/coffee and real toner: real toners convert the silver into something with a color hue, whereas tea/coffee act on the white background mostly. Most real toners (except selenium and in some instances blue toner) will make the print lighter and reveal extra shadow detail, whereas tea/coffee will make it darker and cover up highlight detail.

If you can use it effectively, you will get beautiful prints with standard non-toxic household stuff, but you can not simply substitute sulfur toner for tea/coffee and expect similar results.

imyself · Jun 13, 2014

After reading Tim Rudman's toning book, I too have considered toning with tea after seeing his pleasing results. If you want not just examples but also his approach to tea toning, I'd suggest checking out his book " The photographer's toning book: The definitive guide". He devotes several pages to the topic of tea and coffee toning. The book was published in 2003 and is sadly out of print and quite expensive sold used but I was able to borrow a copy from a university library using my local public library interloan system. When I got a copy, I took loads of notes, its truly a treasure!
Adam

Ian Grant · Jun 13, 2014

Newt_on_Swings said:
I've done staining with coffee and tea and food coloring in my classes that I teach to kids. It works well only on fiber papers, you can soak a rc print for a day and a night and only the edges get stained. The stains only affect the white areas of the print and don't change the blacks. Both strong coffee and tea produce a yellowing of the paper instead of brown shades. Dark red wine stains it pinkish. Prints do smell really good afterwards when they dry.

I never had any problems staining RC prints with tea, coffee, food colourings, retouching dyes etc. It might be more of a problem if you used a hardening fixer.

Ian

DannL. · Jun 13, 2014

Rudeofus said:
I think that is the key difference between tea/coffee and real toner: real toners convert the silver into something with a color hue, whereas tea/coffee act on the white background mostly. Most real toners (except selenium and in some instances blue toner) will make the print lighter and reveal extra shadow detail, whereas tea/coffee will make it darker and cover up highlight detail.

If you can use it effectively, you will get beautiful prints with standard non-toxic household stuff, but you can not simply substitute sulfur toner for tea/coffee and expect similar results.

This was my experience. In my experiments the tea and coffee had no effect on the developed image itself. The papers just soaked up the color. But, that's exactly what I was after. "To tone down the whites in the paper, giving the paper an aged appearance". One of the two was more effective at staining the paper than the other. If memory serves, I think it was the tea.

Steve Smith · Jun 13, 2014

Newt_on_Swings said:
I've done staining with coffee and tea and food coloring in my classes that I teach to kids. It works well only on fiber papers, you can soak a rc print for a day and a night and only the edges get stained.

Obviously nobody ever told that to my RC prints which I stained with coffee as they toned without a care in the world.

It doesn't make a lot of difference if it's RC or fibre paper, the emulsion is on the outer surface and this will take up the stain.

Steve.

pentaxuser · Jun 13, 2014

Steve Smith said:
Obviously nobody ever told that to my RC prints which I stained with coffee as they toned without a care in the world.

Steve.

Based on his pictures in his book nobody told Tim Rudman's prints either.

pentaxuser

Newt_on_Swings · Jun 13, 2014

Could you guys upload an example? All the RC prints with staining did not have much stain on them and the longer soaked prints had edges that separated too. We did them with warm coffee and tea. Fiber is much easier and faster in my class so we did that. RC paper that was used was arista edu vc glossy.

Ian Grant · Jun 13, 2014

The stain isn't proportional to the time a print's immersed, it's dependent on the strength of the solution. What might appear to be a dark solution looks darker because of the volume, in a thin layer it'll be weak.

I use a tea stain on wood sometimes and actually have to boil tea bags for a while and then have to boil off excess water to concentrate the stain.

So just try stronger solutions they work very well and it's so easy.

This is a very old image from the early 1970's using food dye, it was on Ilfospeed Matt RC paper.

Ian

Newt_on_Swings · Jun 14, 2014

I'll will have to give it another whirl next time with some more concentrated solutions. It's a good thing black tea is so inexpensive! I'll toss in a dozen or so.

Steve Smith · Jun 14, 2014

I think I used almost a whole jar of cheap, instant coffee in some warm water. It turned the base white into a cream/ivory colour.

This is straight out of the scanner and looks about right:

Steve.

TheToadMen · Jun 14, 2014

I've seen nice examples from toning with red onions (the strong ones). The onions were chopped up and boiled for quite some time. The red water residu was then used for toning.
Just experiment and have fun!

Ian Grant · Jun 14, 2014

It's a good job you corrected the spelling It was a bit like contemplating mass murder.

Ian

removed account4 · Jun 14, 2014

TheToadMen said:
I've seen nice examples from toning with red onions (the strong ones). The onions were chopped up and boiled for quite some time. The red water residu was then used for toning.
Just experiment and have fun!

you might also try onion SKINS.
we use them to dye eggs at easter
beautiful brown-red i am sure steeping
prints in there would tone them too ...
i used kool aid for a while, but the sugars
didn't make my prints happy.

pentaxuser · Jun 14, 2014

Only based on Tim Rudman's examples as I haven't tried it but it appears that tea gives the more pronounced effect i.e. a more tanned/brown which is counter-intuitive as coffee always looks darker to me as a liquid than does tea.

I imagine that it requires a lot stronger brew than you'd ever want to drink. Overkill may be almost impossible

pentaxuser

Toning with tea and coffee

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