My hopes regarding this question are probably futile but here it goes: when I played around in the darkroom by diluting the print-developer to twice the standard dilution for FB-prints, then overexposed the print about 4-6 times, and snatched the print from the developer at an "appropriate" time, I got the most beatiful peach red tones. Why? Unfortunately, the sharpness, evennes & contrast suffered badly (as might be expected when the print isn't allowed to develop fully) but the tones in the print were great. Consistent results were non-existent, I suppose lith-printers are familiar with the difficulty of snatching prints at exactly the "right" moment for repeated prints.

The developer was Paterson Acuprint, the paper a grade 3 Emaks (a silver-rich East-European paper).

Now, is there anyway to bring out this peach tone and still get a satisfactory sharp & contrasty print (yeah, in my dreams...)?? The colour is quite different from selenium-toning.

-- Peter Olsson (peter.olsson@lulebo.se), April 27, 2000

Answers

As you correctly stated, this is typical of lith prints. I am surprised to hear that it also happens with non-lith material, as it is actually a characteristic of the infectious development which only occurs in dilute lith developer.

I don't quite understand how snatching should affect the sharpness of the print.

Anyway, the best way to reproducibly create such image tones is indeed lith printing. The contrast can be influenced by varying exposure and development time. Generally, lith prints are pretty contrasty in the shadows and very soft in the highlights. But by overexposing even more, you can reduce development time, thus reducing contrast (and it also works the other way around). I strongly recommend you *don't* even try it, as it is highly addictive! I bought a lith testing kit a while ago and got hooked with the first darkroom session.

Oh yes, now I remember two other possible ways of getting results that are somewhat similar to lith prints: One is split toning, e.g. with selenium (for the shadows) and sepia (for the lights). The other one is enriching your conventional developer with a strong alkali, such as sodium hydroxide. As each paper and developer reacts differently to this kind of abuse, you may have to experiment. Ilford MG Warmtone FB responds to this by giving very brown image tones. For more information on this, read Tim Rudman's The Master Photographer's Lith Printing Course. It's a great book, and the only comprehensive lith printing guide, as far as I know.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), April 27, 2000.

I've gotten some "peach" tones when toning low contrast prints in brown toner for considerably less than the recommended time with certain warm papers.

-- (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), April 27, 2000.