Kallitype Print Charistics Between Wet & Dry Print

In an earlier post I showed a before and after image of a Kallitype print still wet after printing and again when it had dried down, to show how much the print darkened, which was considerable in an untoned print. That image was one of my favorites, which of course is why it continues to pop up on this blog. That same image is the subject again, this time the before and after of the Kallitype print after gold toning.

Thirty years ago when I was actively printing hand coated silver, even gold toner wasn't in the budget. Platinum and palladium was in the realm of me buying a Rolls Royce with cash. My prints went untoned, and the existing portfolio I still have of those prints show them to be as pure as the day they were printed. Now, I can tone in both noble metals, and both of them arrived last week, before the printing session, so the logical beginning for me would be to begin with the gold, which is exactly what we did. I say we, including PJ who made his first Kallitype print from a digital negative he produced via Dan Burkholder's method of producing digital negatives, replete with the green toning.

To digress just a moment, PJ's print turned out very nicely, and the gold toning enhanced it even further. That print, much thinner than any negative I would have, printed 12 minutes, triple the print time of the image below, with a print time of 4 minutes. The difference between these two approaches is the use of spectral density for suitable printability. It doesn't really matter which method one uses, as it comes down to personal taste in the final image. If you are not new to this blog you will have read two posts on this subject, with graphs, demonstrating the differences between the two methods. Both work. One if savable for replication for each succeeding negative, the other is visually intuitive, manipulating the entire range of tonal densities along the contrast index curve, increasing the densities proportionally along that line. Not for everyone.

I am able to detect subtle differences in 'color' of a print, between when it is wet and after dry down. Barely, being I am all but color blind in red/green. Yeah, makes things a bit dicey when copying a finished print and trying to replicate it digitally for viewing. To keep that at a minimum I don't do any manipulation of the image digitally before showing it. That of course has its own set of problems. One being the brightness of the print is lost in the digital transformation. Realizing photographers with good eyes can see these differences easily enough, makes me sweat.

The image below shows the footbridge image before and after; wet then dry. The darkening was far less than in an untoned print, yet still some darkening, mostly mid-tones and highlights. I also notice a slight shift in print color with a warming effect on the dry print. My eye sees a warming of the print tones upon dry down. Not that this is a bad thing, being I tend to prefer warm toned prints. What becomes fairly obvious is that although there is darkening, it is in the right places, mostly in the deeper tonal values in the lower tonal range of Zone 1 thru 3, the black regions, although the warming effect is seen in all the tonal ranges.

Gold Toned Kallitype; wet print

The textural values of the wet print are not that different than the dry version. The tonal separation and visible texture and detail remain the same. There is no overall darkening as with an untoned print.









Gold toned Kallitype; dry print

The warming of the image can be seen in the dried print. Also there is no overall darkening of the print, which would be mostly in the middle tones, and lower tonal ranges. What is lost in these images is the brilliance of the actual print.








For comparative sake, I'm including the second print image as comparison;
Gold Toned Kallitype; wet print

The same toning affects on the print can be seen between this wet image and its dry counterpart.
There is not overall darkening of the print due to the gold toning, having coated the silver has kept the overall tonal range intact, yet deepening the tonal ranges Zone I thru Zone III.












Gold Toned Kallitype; dry print

The end result of the gold toning is that it makes printing a Kallitype more predictable in tonal values and overall print darkening, without toning. The gold toning also doubles the longevity of the print.