Getting the best out of Gold Toner

[Duolab123]

You have to be more specific. I routinely use gold chloride to either achieve a true cold tone on neutral papers, or as the cold complement when split toning warm papers. Basically, I use a formula analogous to GP-1 at about a quarter the normal strength. There is no reason to waste gold chloride, and it takes remarkably little to get the job done. You mix up the separate A & B concentrates and store them in glass bottles. Then right before toning you take just enough of the two mixed concentrates and dilute them in plain water for that one particular toning session. I find that only 1/4 fluid oz each in about 24 oz of water will easily tone a days output of 16x20 keeper prints, say, six to ten of them. A $75 100ml bottle of 1% gold chloride typically lasts me an entire year. I never got along with Nelson's, so won't comment on that.

This is how I use Gold toner. The Kodak Blue toner formula that uses Gold is usually way more blue than I want. I use at room temperature, makes the color shift easier to manage. The Fomalux contact paper gives very nice blacks with Gold.

Nelsons Gold toner never thrilled me, 3 separate solutions, silver nitrate etc. I haven't tried it in 25 years, so might be interesting.

By the way, Foma Fomatone paper tones like crazy. I tend to use Se at 25% for Ilford neutral multigrade papers. I reduced to about 3% with the Fomatone and got nice results, anything stronger and it looked like Sepia toner.

I need to mix up some GP-1. I'm after D-max more than anything.

[Drew Wiley]

GP-1 deepens DMax just like selenium, but to a cooler tone. They can both be used if desired, depending on the exact image tone you want. It takes very little GP-1 to get the job done. I use it at about 1/4 the recommended strength of working dilution, and mix just enough to allow a print to be evenly covered when rocking the tray side to side. No sense sending gold down the drain; you can't store it after the A&B mix. And the paper emulsion can only hold so much gold, so any excess concentration is just waste.