Selenium Toner for Archivability

[neil poulsen]

What's the least concentration of Selenium one one can use, and still make a print archival?

I've come to decide that I don't care for the color of prints made with Ilford Fiber Warm Tone paper when toned 1 minute in selenium mixed 1:20 with water. Yet, selenium toned prints are more archival.

At the very least, as A.A. recommends in his books, I can do a 2nd Fix, put it in Hypo Clearing Agent for 3 minutes, and wash for 1 hour. But, it would be nice to do a little "invisible" toning as well for the archival improvement.

[koraks]

Toning for longevity only makes sense when toning is taken to completion. Good news though- a properly processed and untoned print has a really long lifetime. You won't see them fade and likely your kids won't either.

[Alan9940]

No idea how accurate this is, but over the years I've heard you can do 1:40 for about 5 mins and still get some benefit from selenium toning with very little, if any, change in print color. Take that with a grain of salt because I have no way of testing that theory.

[Kirk Gittings]

I thought that selenium toning for increased archivability was debunked. I can't tell you where I heard that but it was sometime around 2000 or so. Henceforth my selenium toning was liberated from any intentions save aesthetics.

[Bill Burk]

Get a bleach and test it. I can’t bleach a print that’s been toned 4 minutes at 1:20, so something happens in that time. What you have with partial toning is two images, one part is metallic silver and the other part is silver-selenide, so if one image degrades due to contaminates in the air you have a backup. I would say if you treat it long enough that bleach still leaves a visible image, you have toned enough.

[Mark Sampson]

It was Doug Nishimura at the Image Permanence Institute (at RIT) who reported this. His tests showed that a print would have to be toned to completion for full archival permanence. Most of us don't want the brick-red color that comes with toning to completion. So I, at least, am happy with whatever protection is achieved when my prints look like I want them to (following Mr. Gittings here).

[Kirk Gittings]

It was Doug Nishimura at the Image Permanence Institute who reported this. His tests showed that a print would have to be toned to completion for full archival permanence. Most of us don't want the brick-red color that comes with toning to completion. So I, at least, am happy with whatever protection is achieved when my prints look like I want them to (following Mr. Gittings here).

cool thanks

[Oren Grad]

What koraks and Mark Sampson said - complete protection requires toning to completion. which does things to image character that most of us will find unpleasant. But partial toning does provide partial protection, to precisely the extent that the image silver is converted.

See also this thread:

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?13859-Paper-toning-and-permanence-experimental-data

Ctein's tests, reported in his Post Exposure book, suggest that even partial toning provides meaningful protection against the kinds of light-driven image deterioration that are distinctive to RC paper because its combination of titanium dioxide whitener and polyethylene coating.

I (partially) selenium tone all of my RC keepers, for both esthetic and conservation reasons. FB is a tougher call because of the extra work involved, and often I won't bother.

[Drew Wiley]

I use all toners only relative to intended tone per se (final image color). I presume that this gives some extra protection from pollutants like sulfur dioxide; but I wouldn't want to live and breathe the air anywhere that would be a serious issue anyway. I just don't see the point of toning a print all the way to where it comes out looking unacceptable to my own esthetics. Maybe if deep brown is to your taste, you could go all the way with it; but it doesn't suit me. "Archival" is a very plastic term in any event, with no fixed definition. I gold tone more often anyway. The selenium and sulfide toners are accessory.

[Renato Tonelli]

Some printers will tone in Selenium long enough to obtain D-max, and after a complete wash, will bathe the print in Sistan.

[neil poulsen]

Thanks everyone.

In the future, I think that I'll dispense with Selenium toning. I can keep the bottle around for aesthetic purposes.

[ggruber]

I always used 1:13. I have properly fixed, washed and toned prints that are 40-50 years old that still look fine.

[bob carnie]

It has always been my belief that the selenium couples around the silver metal forming a extra barrier of stability, depending on dilution and the amount of time the shadows and midtones do receive the selenium, maybe the highlights less.
I still use a 1:5 dilution with short time , I like the tonal change and I do believe there is added protection... nothing I have heard here on these posts convinces me otherwise.

[tgtaylor]

Some printers will tone in Selenium long enough to obtain D-max, and after a complete wash, will bathe the print in Sistan.

+1.

[Drew Wiley]

I seldom use selenium as much as I once did for classic graded papers like Seagull G. But it's always been at 1:20. One of my current favorite papers, Ilford MG Cooltone, tones so ridiculously fast in selenium that even at that dilution, I can only use it for about 15 sec in cold water before it starts losing the intended cold tone. So it's just for sake of a bit of optional tweak after my primary gold toning. I've never been convinced Sistan does much of anything, though it might once have had a valid purpose with RC papers, which I don't personally use anyway. The whole emphasis on toning for sake of image permanence (versus esthetic considerations) stems way back to when industrial revolution style air pollution from coal pumped huge amounts of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants into urban air, which wreaked havoc with silver images. Hence the former popularity of deep sulfide toning as well as platinum prints and other alternative. I have some lovely brown albumen prints from that era, still in superb conditions, as well as some blue cyanotypes. By comparison, many of the old silver prints of various types show symptoms of partial failure.