drydown for matte fiber paper

[robby parkman]

It appears to me that the drydown effect for Ilford fiber multigrade paper is much more for the glossy paper than for the matte surface. Is this anyone else's observation?

[Richard Littlewood]

I've been a big fan of the matt paper for a few years now, and the main striking difference between gloss and matte is they both look very similar when wet, but when dry the gloss paper retains a bit of the 'wet' look but matte paper changes totally - especially in the dark areas. The matte paper dries as it were, differently, and it really only appears to dry down more because of this 'merging' to dark of tones that the gloss paper would still keep well seperated.
I've on the whole always found gloss papers much easier to use than matte, as the dry down is pretty much the same through the tonal range. With a 'straight' B+W image I print a bit on the grey side with matte then let a weak (1+60) selenium whack the blacks.

[Bruce Barlow]

My tests show Glossy dries down 8 percent. Have not tried matte, but I'd suggest that you do a test - make prints at -8, -10, and -15 percent, keep your reference print wet, dry the test ones, and compare. Then you'll know for sure, and be able to replicate what you like. Takes about 15 minutes to make the prints, and then they dry at your leisure.

Good luck!

[bob carnie]

I like what Richard says on this.
When using this paper I prefer to bleach sepia tone and strong selenium. Beautiful results.