Lith Printing: Fixer kills highlights/too much contrast

[Mateo]

I really doubt that the fix is killing your prints, that is unless you have some contamination that's turning it into farmer's reducer. I use rapid fix at film strength and have no problem with bleaching. I'm going to venture a guess that what you are seeing is what Tim Rudman refers to in his book as "fix up".

Lith printing is very paper specific and some of the papers listed by Mr Rudman no longer work the way they did when that book was published. The Kentmere/Luminos papers were amazing before they removed the cadmium.

Another thing to consider is the contrast and density of your negative. I like contrasty negs for lith printing but if your negative is too dense you will get into reciprocity failure with the paper. Try a fast paper like Oriental VC.

[Bosaiya]

Just an update: Over the weekend I decided to try it again using a different negative - this time a portrait. It turned out beautifully, just like in the books and photos I've seen. Creamy light tones and wonderful darks with transitions smooth as butter. It exceeded all of my expectations, a rhinestone collar that was completely washed out in traditional printing even with much burning showed up wonderfully; I was able to get the black hair completely black and the white skin perfectly white with slow transitions in the shadows. What a thrill!

So that's nice. The problem is I have shot a sum total of FIVE portraits and really don't like doing them at all. I guess it really comes down to subject as well as technique. That's a bit of a disappointment as it renders almost the entire body of my work unsuitable. I'll still play around with it, and maybe I'll grow to like the high-contrast look that I'm getting with my normal shots, I'll just fondly look at all of the nice landscapes and portraits done lith-style with a pang of melancholy.