Warm - Neutral - Cold Why Bother?

[dancqu]

If a print is going to be toned and/or archived with
a resulting change in hue then why be concerned with
the print's hue prior to treatment?

There are a lot of threads dealing with the paper's hue
and that after this or that developer. I think there must be
quite a few turning out prints that have no intention of
toning and/or archiving. I wonder how commen is NO
post usuall processing treatment. Dan

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

The toning result will be affected by the tone prior to toning.

 

[Ian Grant]

My first answer was to your question in the title, and at first I thought well if you don't know then you have no understanding of the subtle arts of printing.

But actually you make a fair point.

Many of us will be useing a sequence of processing for archival permanence and usually the final process is Selenium toning, while this itself changes the tones on Chloro-bromide papers it has little effect except a slight increase in Dmax on Bromide papers. Larger shifts can be made by exploiting this paper type / developer combination.

So we control the feel of our prints by our choice of paper and developer, knowing from experience what results we'll obtain.

Now I should stress we are talking about subtle changes rather than the more obvious full on Sepia toning post processing.

 

[rogueish]

Agfa's Sistain (sp?) does not effect print tone and is for archival purposes. So the cold/warm tone chosen by the printer in paper/developer combination would be the look when finished.
Since I'm limited on space/time/money ( :rolleyes: who isn't?), not all my prints get toned. Just the ones I am finally truely happy with - read :not many.