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Re: [OM] Preliminary attempts at Photoshop Sepia

Subject: Re: [OM] Preliminary attempts at Photoshop Sepia
From: "John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:04:16 -0500
At 15:30 6/13/02, Mike Cormier wrote:


Ok,

So I gave it a quick try. I think the hard part is going to be to know when to use this technique and to know when using it will be overdoing it.

Here's my first two quick & dirty tries...

http://community.webshots.com/album/40644284LxmxOk

Mike,
Some interesting photographs!

Sepia is only one of several monochrome types of "toning," although it's currently among the most popular. It emulates albumen prints (that weren't gold or platinum toned; see below) with a russet brown color dating to the mid-1800's (yep, an emulsion made from egg whites). Albumen print coloration results from very minute silver particles in colloidal suspension versus the larger particles found in modern silver gelatin prints. The brown coloration resulted from using hypo as a fixative on salted papers . . . and they lost overall density in the process. In the mid-1800's sepia coloration was seen as a problem!

Short history of print papers:

Salted papers (circa 1840-1855):
Made by soaking paper in a salt solution, drying it and then coating it with silver nitrate. A starch variation, called arrowroot paper, very nearly replaced plain salted paper, but it was overtaken by albumen prints.

Albumen prints (circa 1855 - 1895)
Eventually a great improvement over plain salted and starch by using egg white and silver nitrate. Note that albumen, along with other types of salted papers didn't completely die out until about 1925.

Toning in general was developed and used to help preserve prints. Salted type papers (plain, starch and albumen) have a bad habit of fading. Precious metal toning was the major method used to keep this from happening.

Other monochrome colorations include:

Gold Toning:
Gold toning using gold chloride was sometimes done with albumen prints to improve their archival life. This did _not_ turn them a gold color, but a dark purple or purple-brown color.

Cyanotype:
The cyanotype process is different from other ones. Blueprints are cyanotypes. Continuous tone cyanotype prints have blue tones.

Platinum Toning:
A process using nitric acid, potassium chloroplatinite and water (Steiglitz method). Early attempts at platinum toning using acidified platinic chloride were ineffective with albumen prints. However the Steiglitz formulation was found to be effective with early silver prints and was used for the same purpose as gold toning with albumen and silver prints in the late 1800's. It gives a deep brown to brownish-black coloring. A combination of gold and platinum toning yields an olive black coloring, and in certain combinations (how long it's in each) it is possible to yield a neutral black. Combination toning of gold and platinum was poplular from about 1895 to 1925, especially with studio portraits.

Selenium:
As I understand it this gives a cross between cyanotype and gold toning, but I haven't seen a good example with my own eyes. AFIK this is also a current process, not one dating to the 19th Century. Applied for the same purpose though.

Orthochromatic:
Usually done "in camera" using a cyan or minus-red filter with panchromatic film. This emulates very, very old continuous tone orthochromatic films which were very high in blue response with near zero red response. The significantly different color response creates gray tones from colors that can be much different compared to no filtering, and especially a yellow, orange or red filters. This is different from "toning" but is emulates historic B/W film response curves. A more historic looking print may be made in combination with using a minus-red filter for making the negative and using an historic toning method, or emulating it, for making the print.

Wanted you to be aware of other "colorizing" effects that can be used. The bottom line is what your vision is for your work.

-- John


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