Sepia Toning

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Sepia toning is used to create a warmer print tone. Conventional sepia toning consists of the following steps:

• Thoroughly wash the completed black and white print
• Soak the print in bleach until the silver image is completely converted from its metallic state,
• Rinse the bleached print in water to remove all traces of bleach,
• Tone the print in sepia toning solution,
• Wash thoroughly and dry the print.

It is much easier to obtain consistent, even results if the hypo used to fix the print contains hardener. Wash times are usually extended by 50% to ensure that all traces of fixer have been removed. Any fixer which remains in the paper will reduce silver when it is placed into the bleach.

Stepwise sepia toning is a variation on the conventional toning process. The print is only partially bleached before being toned, creating a step or partial increment of toning. The effect is similar to the multi tone image (duotone). Typically, the shadows remain black while the midtones of the image are a warm brown color. This gives the toned image a little more punch due to slightly greater shadow contrast. The following processing steps occur:

• Thoroughly wash the completed black and white print,
• Soak the print in a dilute bleach solution while providing gentle agitation,
• At a point when the silver is partially converted, remove the print and wash thoroughly,
• Tone the print in sepia toner until all bleached silver is toned,
• Wash thoroughly and dry the print.

This stepwise toning process can be iterated to create tritones and quadtones. This is accomplished by bleaching a layer of silver and toning one color, then bleaching the next layer of silver and toning it a different color. This iterated approach gives even greater control over image toning. When done carefully the results can be quite impressive. Unfortunately, the process is very time consuming and finicky.

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