Lith oddities - little patches of white

[Travis Nunn]

Personally I'd still lean towards the paper being the culprit.

You say you flip the paper? That's fairly uncommon with lith printing (as far as I know, anyway)....could it be bubbles are forming on the paper when you flip it?

[Dan Henderson]

I have this problem every once in awhile with Fomatone. I suspect, but do not know for sure, that I somehow contaminated the paper with fixer or something else just before development. Next print, its gone. Maybe it is the occasionally defective sheet of paper, I don't know.

But I do know that Rudman's admonition that poor darkroom hygiene will show up when lith printing is oh, so true. I have learned to keep my hands clean while handling the dry paper, and never, ever, touch the paper with my hands after it has gone into the developer. I put it in face down, turn it over with tongs after 1 minute, and develop the rest of the time face up with constant agitation, never poking at the paper with my tongs (or anything else.) I use separate tongs for developer, stop, and fix to avoid contamination.

Regarding your contrast issue, I find that when I get a muddy looking print I need to back off on the exposure time, which will necessitate an increase in development time. 1/4 or 1/2 stop is usually enough to give me nice, clean, bright highlights and punchy, dark shadows.

[Bob Carnie]

this looks like initial agitation in the developer, or air bells .
the fact you added more water and warmed up suggests that the flow of developer got on the print more quickly.
If the spots move on the paper , its probably not the paper but uneven dev.

to increase the blacks,.. flash the paper for the highlights and shorten the snatch point. as Dan points out less dev time, but use the flash to put
tone in your highlights.