Edwal Yellow and Blue toner - any experience?

[Vaughn]

Blue toner for film

[Vaughn]

Matt,

I thought BLUE was an iron blue toner. My understanding is that component of the toner reacts with silver in the image and turns into dye - in turn toning that location. So.... I thought it will affect the shadow and leave the highlight alone. Instructions say to wash long enough to clear the highlight.

I did that and everything washed off.... very very very vague hint of blue remained but it hardly left any color....

Note that the above formula warns against long washes in water that is alkaline. How's your water?

[johnielvis]

Thanks for the formula...120 gallons--wow--i don't think my bathtub is that big...lemme print this out and read it through....

although it looks like this would only be good for it's intended color--but may work out in the end if I need blue--I wanted to use red and green 2 color process, but if I can find no mordant process that works, then it'll be the straight toners like this--no reason why red/blue won't work.

what I'm looking for is one that will mordant the silver and allow me to use the dye of my choice to color it--apparently this worked though and 1lb ferricyanide per 120 gallons is like almost exactly 1g/l...way less concentration than what is NOT working for my mordant....hmmmm maybe the trick is to tone soltuion/rinse/tone solution/rinse and build it up like I've seen mentioned....i think I'm going to order the forumulary toners and see...it looks like the forumulary copper toner can also function as a mordant too from what else I'm reading...like the copper salts are better than the silver salts for holding the dye.

[johnielvis]

well--I ordered the toners...in the meantime I took a positive and plopped in the recommended concentration for the night---I tried building it up but after 4 trys (5' each) with subsequent washes...it didn't look like the dense areas were being affected at all--since my time is finite--in it goes and see what HOURS will do to the reaction--I just read some moviemaker stating that his tonings last DAYS...so that got me thinking...maybe that's the ticket--lots of silver gonna take lots of time in the chemicals...we tomorrow morning we'll see see if the brute method works...

[johnielvis]

in the morning I saw red (tone) on the shadows and thought...well, time heals all...

upon washing, the shadows got blacker and blacker until the olde black silver (minus what got bleached off) remained

all that happened was like the previous--the toner did a great job of overall permanently tinting everything but the silver---like the opposite of what I want--oh and the bleach did it's job too--I'm missing significant density and information now...so the bleach does work at the concentrations provided.

since it looked coated before the wash all I can figure is that the ferricyanide is no good as a mordant.

the copper toner I'm getting may prove to be not only a regular toner on it's own, but the copper may accept dyes more readily--so my copper red toner may actually work for green--we'll see....

I dipped a fuji black and white in it....looks like maybe something there???? we'll see upong drying


I'm fully convinced now that these edawal things won't work for toning the tri x reversals right out of the box.

man I shouldn't have bought that bottle of green too...bluh...well---toning polaroids will be artsy I guess..

[johnielvis]

UPDATE--the red edwal toner works VERY WELL--like "as advertised" and per the directions for the fuji 3000 black and white prints!

SO--what do you all think--too much silver in the tri-x reversals then--that's what I think is going on--way too dense for the dye method to work unless I make very thin images to start with---I read in the old toner info that you want a very thin film for toning to work properly, so I'm guessing that the trix is just way too thick and crunchy for the dyes to have any appreciable affect--that is, the effect is always overpowered by the huge silver content....

unless we bleach a lot away first----hmmm well--adding bleach to the process will certainly increase the effective film speed...anyways---first things first---experiment with the copper and iron toners and see what they offer...