Metol only developers will produce adjacency effects via exhaustion byproducts of Metol. Adding HQ (or similar) in sufficient quantity will switch this off - it's likely that the level of Pyrogallol in PMK's working solution may be such that its impact on the Metol exhaustion process is low enough that it allows adjacency effects to form.
That's likely largely the Phenidone development inhibition effects rather than anything else. And EMA is nothing special - anything over absolute standstill has been shown repeatedly across long ranges of developer series and microdensitometric study to be merely affecting overall contrast (Litho dot formation is a different matter) - i.e. give your negs the least necessary exposure and least processing time needed to print on the highest grade that you dare & you'll end up at the same point. It just requires a little more in the way of (very basic) process control than the mystical handwaving of EMA. Or you could use a darkroom unsharp mask to produce stronger and more controllable sharpness enhancement effects.
Phenidones (specifically Dimezone-S) may also produce some significant tanning effects too - certainly enough for Kodak to patent their useage in processing dye transfer emulsions - but the reactions causing crosslinking that Lee posits in the aforementioned patent will have no impact on modern well hardened emulsions. And unless you have tested using Kodak D-1 or other developers that do not contain developing agents proven to produce adjacency effects under some conditions (Metol) or potentially under all conditions if correctly used (Phenidones), how do you know that you aren't seeing those effects instead of assuming it must be the coupler forming component?
Too high a level of metol, even at 1+3. Henn evolved D-23 into Microdol, then Microdol-X (Perceptol is the same thing effectively) - which in dilute form is capable of delivering very good sharpness via Metol exhaustion. Beutler is the same idea but taken to a more extreme sharpness aim rather than granularity/ sharpness balance.
HC-110 wasn't designed for maximising adjacency effects. The P:Q ratio is important to this.
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