Wet vs. Dry

[Tony Egan]

I would also recommend you keep all your less than perfect dried down prints for experimentation with other techniques such as bleaching, bleach and redevelopment and sepia or other toning options which often take the top of the highlights giving you a more contrasty, punchier print. On occasions you will find an initial discard comes out a winner.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

With papers the micro reticulation causes the surface dulling, heat drying alleviates it, steaming or use of a microwave momentarily remelts the surface gelatin super-coat, within reason the more the heat the greater the gloss, the extreme is glazing (ferrotyping) where the surface is deliberately re-melted against a chrome metal plate.

So then there might indeed be something to my assumption that a gentle microwave heating of a damp print is similar to a steaming treatment? At least in terms of surface appearance alteration?

But since steaming would seem to be an external application of damp heat and microwaving an application of internally-generated damp heat, would there be any other additional reasons for concern when microwaving?

I know from experience that excessive curling is one possible downside. But the overall effect - the enhancement of surface sheen - is pretty darned dramatic, and to my eye worth the trouble, if it's not somehow destroying the print internally.

Ken

 

[PVia]

...until I added an ounce of benzotriazole to a half gallon of working solution of Dektol. .

Bruce, was that an ounce of 10% solution?

 

[jordanstarr]

I have only briefly hear someone mention selenium toning. about 5 minutes in 1:40 will increase the intensity of your photo slightly (making richer blacks, while adding some depth to the photograph), which might help.

You also never mentioned what paper your using. If you're using FB Warmtone, it tends to appear duller as the base isn't as white. Also, if you're using matte lustre paper or semi-matt, it will look "weaker" than glossy.

 

[2F/2F]

Selenium toning would make the darks that are already too dark even darker. It would also change the color of the print.

If anything chemical to recover a print that has dried down unacceptably, it is a mild bleaching. I do it all the time when I decide I should have printed something slightly brighter over all. I also do it when I want to slightly change the contrast (pop the highlights throughout the print) of something, by using a quick shot of diluted bleach on a print that has not been pre-soaked. Then, of course, there is localized bleaching, which I also do not all that rarely. It allows you to "paint in" your highlights and really fine tune your print.

 

[AndreasT]

A while ago I took a piece of white fixed photo paper and ripped it in such a way so that I got a piece of the emulsion to separate from the paper base. I would advise everybody to try this.
You will see that the emulsion (containing no silver) is milky looking. When you wet the piece of emulsion it will become clear as glass. As far as I am concerned this is where the problem lies. Not in the fact that the paper expands and lets through more light and so on. If I remember correctly it was apiece of Ilford MG IV paper. I measured the density of the dry emulsion and I came to the conclusion that it darkens the paper by about 4%. However it darkens the lights and lightens the blacks since it reflects light from the blacks of the print before it reaches the silver.
What I do is print slightly lighter for the lights because of dry-down and increase the contrast just a little bit to blacken the blacks. In effect dry-down is actually contrast down when the print dries.
Anyway one should always dry the test prints. This works for me.

 

[AndreasT]

If one considers that if a white surface has a grey value of say 4 and a dark/black surface has say 90. The darkening of the whites by 4 is an increase of 100%. A lightening of the blacks by about 4 is only about 5%. So we see we always see dry-down in the lights and do not notice the "dry-up" in the blacks.