Bromide Printing and Enlarging / A Practical Guide to the Making of Bromide Prints by Contact and Bromide Enlarging by Daylight and Artificial Light, With the Toning of Bromide Prints and Enlargements

by John A. Tennant

When the desired tone is reached, remove the print from the toning solution and wash quickly and well in running water for fifteen minutes. If washed too long, the color of the print will fade and a dead and lifeless print will result. If not washed long enough, the yellow of the ferricyanide will remain in the print, robbing its gradations of brightness and purity of color and impairing the permanency of the print.

A big advantage in this method of toning is its wonderful adaptability. There is no hard and fast rule as to the proportion of the chemicals to the bulk of water used. Try two drams of each of the two solutions; then three drams of each, but watch that the print does not get beyond you in toning. The only practical difference in my formula and others that I have seen is that I make my stock solution weaker than that ordinarily advised and use less of it to a certain amount of water, because I prefer slow toning and the accompanying ease of control which the flash-in-the-pan formula does not admit. Quick toning, like quick development, tends to block the shadows in the print, and if you once get bronzed shadows the print is practically hopeless. Not quite ruined, however, as a bath in a 5 per cent solution of sodium carbonate will discharge the color and then, if the print is faded, it may be redeveloped in an alkaline developer such as metol-hydro. But before it is retoned the print must be thoroughly washed, as the presence of sodium carbonate does not permit the toning solution to do its work.

Finally, I may say that, while a bath of acetic acid and water is often advised to stop the toning action in this method, I have never found it necessary.

All the thin varieties of bromide paper curl badly in drying. If they are to be kept unmounted it is well to immerse them in water to which has been added a few drops of glycerine. This will ensure their lying flat after drying. A solution of 2 ounces of glycerine in 25 ounces of water is advised when it is desired to make bromides on heavy rough paper remain flat, after drying, for book illustration and similar purposes.

If one is trying to rush through a bromide print, it can be trimmed while wet by placing it on a sheet of stiff paper and cutting through both.

The paper will be found to cockle the mounts badly in drying. Aside from the glue mountant, formula for which accompanies the paper, I know no preventive except to mount the prints while dry with the dry mounting tissue. As the paper when wet stretches one way considerably, as much as a third of an inch on a ten- or twelve-inch length, provision must be made in trimming, especially if mounts with centers of a given size are used.

The paper being covered with an emulsion which in warm weather is very soft while wet, mounting is somewhat more difficult than with some of the other papers. My method is to mount not more than half a dozen at once, placing them face down, one on top of the other, on a glass or ferrotype plate, blotting off the surface water and spreading the paste over the top one in the usual way. I place this on the mount and then stretch over it smoothly a damp handkerchief or piece of very thin rubber cloth, rubbing the print down with my hands, seldom using the squeegee and then very lightly. By this method abrasion of the surface seldom results and air-bells are unknown. Owing to the strong contracting power of the paper in drying, the mounting paste must be used freely, especially at the edges of the print.

Apart from the methods of procedure here given, there are innumerable modifications covering every detail of contact printing and enlarging on bromide paper. Most of these have been given careful trial as published, but few have quite fulfilled the expectations they created.

BOOKS.

Manuals dealing with the manipulation of the various brands of paper may also be obtained, generally gratis, from the various manufacturers of bromide paper or their American agents as follows: The Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, N. Y.; The Defender Photo Supply Co., Rochester, N. Y.; J. L. Lewis, New York City.