Post Sepia/Sulphide Toner Fixing

[Kyle Juron]

Hi all, I've been working with some sepia and selenium sulphide toners as of late and I'm trying to find information regarding post toning fix procedures for fibre prints. According to Tim Rudman's book, toners that reintroduce halides into the print should be followed with a fixing bath to solubilize any of these residual compounds and remove them from the print during hypo clearing/washing. Rudman recommends a "plain hypo" and remarks that a rapid fix is too severe but doesn't give much detail, and I've seen that Ilford Hypam @ 1:4 for 2 minutes will remove colour from a selenium sulphide toned print. The "plain hypo" that I've switched to is a 10% sodium thiosulfate solution which seems to remove less colour from the print.

I know that sulphide toning provides very good archival permanence and also tends to reveal under-fixed prints, but information about the post toning fix process seems to be a little more difficult to come by. Does anyone have any information that they can share regarding their post-toning fixing procedures?

[RMiksell]

Sulphide toning is done after fixing the print. As you mentioned, underfixed prints will have issues (I've used the Moersch vario toner without any issues) but the instructions say you should develop to completion and consider using two fixer baths. If you're using a direct toner such as a liver of sulphur (potassium polysulfide) it deposits silver sulphide on the image which improves permanance. If you're using an indirect toning method (such as the vario toner or thiourea toner) you bleach the print first which reintroduces halides, and then redevelop in the toner solution which replaces the halides with silver sulphide. You should only need to rinse the print and dry afterwords, no additional fixing required.

[Michael Wesik]

Sulphide toning is done after fixing the print. As you mentioned, underfixed prints will have issues (I've used the Moersch vario toner without any issues) but the instructions say you should develop to completion and consider using two fixer baths. If you're using a direct toner such as a liver of sulphur (potassium polysulfide) it deposits silver sulphide on the image which improves permanance. If you're using an indirect toning method (such as the vario toner or thiourea toner) you bleach the print first which reintroduces halides, and then redevelop in the toner solution which replaces the halides with silver sulphide. You should only need to rinse the print and dry afterwords, no additional fixing required.

Completely agree with you, and to add that according to Tim Rudman the issue of post-toning fixing has to do with whether all of the halides are redeveloped in the toning process. If a print is not toned to completion - in that not all of the halides are redeveloped - to control colour or produce some effect, it is best to re-fix and then hypo clear the print to prevent the printing out of the halides not converted during toning. A plain hypo fix of 5-10 minutes will suffice; rapid fix is too strong for this application. This was the info passed on to us.

[RMiksell]

Reading on Moersch's site http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/artikel/anleitungen/120/lang:en it talks about bleaching and fixing to remove base fog prior to the toning bath to prevent toning the borders of the print. You would probably want a slower acting fixer for control so you do not end up remove detail from the highlights of the print.

[Toyon]

Reading on Moersch's site http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/artikel/anleitungen/120/lang:en it talks about bleaching and fixing to remove base fog prior to the toning bath to prevent toning the borders of the print. You would probably want a slower acting fixer for control so you do not end up remove detail from the highlights of the print.

So you believe that edge toning is the result of base fog?

Interesting. I sometimes get edge toning, but it shows up quite unevenly. Benzotriazole is the best means I have found to eliminate it.

[Michael Wesik]

Reading on Moersch's site http://www.moersch-photochemie.de/content/artikel/anleitungen/120/lang:en it talks about bleaching and fixing to remove base fog prior to the toning bath to prevent toning the borders of the print. You would probably want a slower acting fixer for control so you do not end up remove detail from the highlights of the print.

That's a very interesting page. I've never tried iron toning before. I've heard that it has some cool effects. But the bleach that this particular thread is referencing is a rehalogenizing bleach that puts halides back into a print as part of the process of indirect toning in sulphide. After this bleaching application the print is then toned, briefly washed, fixed in plain hypo, hypocleared and washed. I think that the bleaching you're referencing is a reducing bleach, the dilute Farmers Reducer, which is a different animal. But it's really useful knowledge that a dilute reducer will remove base fog.

[RMiksell]

That's a very interesting page. I've never tried iron toning before. I've heard that it has some cool effects. But the bleach that this particular thread is referencing is a rehalogenizing bleach that puts halides back into a print as part of the process of indirect toning in sulphide. After this bleaching application the print is then toned, briefly washed, fixed in plain hypo, hypocleared and washed. I think that the bleaching you're referencing is a reducing bleach, the dilute Farmers Reducer, which is a different animal. But it's really useful knowledge that a dilute reducer will remove base fog.

I haven't tried it yet either. Before they talked about Farmers Reducer they recommended using a ferricyanide bleach (which contains potassium bromide) and fixing for a short duration or using very dilute Farmers Reducer (if only treating a couple of prints). Indirect sulphide toning can be controlled by how much you bleach the print (less bleaching generally preserves shadows), and for thiourea toner, the pH of the toning solution. For thiourea toner the development usually takes less than 30 seconds unless your toning bath is nearly exhausted. Once the print is redeveloped there would be no remaining silver halides so no need to re-fix after redevelopment, just wash. If you only partially redevelop the print that should allow you to run the print through multiple developers for different effects. In the end you want the image fully redeveloped, if you only partially redevelop and re-fix the print will lose all the remaining silver halides (and that part of the image).

It appears there's a lot more you can do with bleaching, printing, and redeveloping I have not yet begun to explore. Here's a thread on apug Tim Rudman is chiming in on http://www.apug.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-34052.html.

[Michael Wesik]

In the end you want the image fully redeveloped, if you only partially redevelop and re-fix the print will lose all the remaining silver halides (and that part of the image).

The purpose of the post-toning fix is to remove any undeveloped halides such that they won't print out over time. Partial redevelopment can be used to control colour but may leave undeveloped halides. From my experience with sulphide toning, you won't loose "part of the image" in the process of re-fixing a partially redeveloped print, though the colour may change. Perhaps if you used an aggressive rapid fix you might see a difference in image but if you use a plain hypo fix for 5 to 10 minutes followed by a hypoclear and wash, you're all good. Multiple toning applications is a different animal.