Talk:Photographic print toning

History
Beginning in the 1880s, sepia was produced by adding a pigment, called sepia, made from the Sepia officinalis cuttlefish found in the English channel, to the positive print of a photograph.


 * I removed the history as I believe it is factually incorrect. None of the books about photographic print toning I have read that also have a history section mention this fact. The citation for this section just displayed a very brief page about the cuttlefish. It made no mention whatsoever of any use by humans of the cuttlefish ink, let alone use in traditional darkroom photography. I don't think this is the fault of any one contributor, it looks like the History section got bit incorporated into it from other sections of the page over time, so the error could have occurred by accident. I don't have time right now to write a new history as I would have to find the right sources. If anyone else wants to write a history I think they must include a citation from a published book about photographic print toning, not a website about mollusks. If anyone wants to do this a good place to start would be The Photographer's Toning Book: The Definitive Guide by Dr. Tim Rudman. The Google Books link unfortunately returned a 500 error (so no link, use Google) and the book itself is currently out of print (Although available in many public libraries and second-hand book dealers). It would be good if the history mentioned more than one toning technique, as the word sepia just refers to the appearance imparted on the print, which can come from a number of processes, with sulphide toners being the most notable. For instance, gold toning can give a sepia appearance to some early printing techniques such as printing-out paper. Simgrant (talk) 00:39, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Merge proposal
What do people thing of merging both selenium toning and sepia tone into this article? They're both types of print toning and there appears to be some redundant information repeated between the articles.

Alternatively - merge the short selenium toning article here with a redirect, strip much of sepia tone's generic information but leave it with the historical and pop-culture information. --Imroy 22:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, I did the latter. Selenium toning is now just a redirect to this article. I decided that sepia tone would be about the digital methods used to imitate sepia toning, so I moved the historical information here. I also added some info from an Ilford document about toning but it didn't provide much detailed information. So the article still needs some detail about metal and dye replacement toning. --Imroy 02:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sepia tone should also be merged here, into a sub-section, until there's enough information to warrant a separate article for digital methods. --jacobolus (t) 18:08, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not accurate to say that sepia tone refers to digital photography alone. The technique in color photography of creating the older style appearance long predates digital photography. By pulling out the historical information and only leaving the recent information, it leaves a false definition to the article. It either needs to be fully merged, or have it's historical information restored. Merennulli (talk) 06:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Or moved to a new article called “digital print toning” or similar. But I think just merging it is the best option; there's not really enough material for two separate articles, and the historical information is relevant even to those looking for information about digital methods.  --jacobolus (t) 20:33, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Request for pictures other than sepia toned
I think it'd be nice if there were examples of toned prints using toners other than sepia. Thoughts?
 * Agreed. If someone has examples, post them. --CPAScott 17:01, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Could someone please change the second photo to something else? It might be considered inappropriate for some. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.99.91.186 (talk) 12:55, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I changed it. 72.71.227.73 (talk) 19:49, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

example not sepia toned
The top picture is not sepia toned. Its (by the look and date) an albumen print, gold toned. This gives a similar colour. I guess but dont know that sepia toning dates from maybe 1910-1920 in common use. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Justinc (talk • contribs) 23:54, 13 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It is sepia toned in the sense that the colour of the dark areas resemble the pigment sepia. What you mean to say is that it may not be sulphide toned, which gives a sepia look. Perhaps a clearer definition of sepia tone needs to be given in the article. Simgrant (talk) 00:47, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Contradictions
Sepia toning is done in two steps. First the image is soaked in a dilute bleach to remove pigment from the silver particles so the brown tones can be visible in even the darkest areas of the photograph. Incomplete bleaching will create a multi-toned image with black or very dark brown shadows

Except for polysulfide toners, sepia toning is done in three stages. First the print is soaked in a potassium ferricyanide bleach to re-convert the metallic silver to silver halide. The print is washed to remove excess potassium ferricyanide then immersed into a bath of toner, which converts the silver halides to silver sulfide.

The above paragraphs, taken from the Sepia section of the article, directly contradict each other (two vs three steps). The more accurate paragraph should remain, while the other should be edited or removed. -- Shruti14 t c s 01:37, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * You're right. User had put in the first paragraph, replacing a completely different paragraph. I thought I had reverted that edit, so I was surprised to see not only you reporting on his contradictory paragraph, but my edit wasn't even in the article history. I tried again, again using Twinkle and found that my edit still wasn't registering. Finally I tried a manual revert and found that the edit was being blocked by the spam filter. I guess Twinkle doesn't handle that situation. The removed paragraph I was trying to reinstate contained a reference to andrewprokos.com, which is in the spam blacklist. Perhaps this is what Hu12 was trying to fix. Perhaps he should have included an actual explanation for his edit, rather than copying his new text into the edit summary. Anyway, I've reverted his edit by replacing the offending reference with a  . --Imroy (talk) 16:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Equation went missing from Sepia ages ago
About the time of the merge, did the equations for applying sepia go missing? I can't find them on any current page on Wikipedia any more. Hullo exclamation mark (talk) 13:25, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Found it http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sepia_tone&oldid=224973593 Could we add this back in again. I really like the equations for sepia, luma, greyscale etc. on Wikipedia.  It helps me understand (And implement) what actually happens during each process. Hullo exclamation mark (talk) 13:39, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Dates of common use?
Sepia-tone photographs were common in the Victorian & Edwardian eras; I'm interested in more precise dating: when did this come into common use & why, when did it fall out of favor & why? linas (talk) 15:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I can't recall the exact references, although it is mentioned in books by Ctein and books by Steve Anchell, that the Image Permanence Institute did a study that found that sulphide and polysulphide toners that convert the image from silver to silver sulphide (and often give a sepia colour as a result) was the most archival treatment, better even than gold, platinum or selenium toning. It might be fair to say that the reason prints that are extant today from the early history of photography have this tone is because these were the photos that survived the aging process. Another reason is that different printing processes might favour different toning methods. For instance silver gelatine prints favour sulphide or selenium toners, but gold was apparently a popular toner for Printing-Out Paper, and cyanotypes can be toned in tea, coffee or wine. Also, some papers and processes might not show an obvious colour change after toning. Hope this helps. Simgrant (talk) 02:33, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

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Selenium Toning
Moving this here due to unencyclopedic tone, lack of citations, and weird formatting. It feels as though the editor who added this had some useful information but didn't know how to furnish it. If we can get some sources on it, it would do to redo the selenium toning subheading to incorporate this.

47.224.217.211 (talk) 19:35, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) In most applications, selenium toning was not used for its sepia or red tone by fine art photographers. In fact it was used for the opposite of those effects
 * 2) Agfa Portriga Rapid and Agfa Record Rapid (the highest silver content black-and-white photographic paper made for the mass market) had a brownish-green tone. Depending on the strength of selenium tone mixed in water, a three- to four-minute tray bath, with continuous circulation, removed the brownish green tone and provided a deep rich black.
 * 3) Higher concentrations of selenium toning and longer tray baths produced the red effect. 99% of selenium-toned vintage prints  in museums and sold at galleries and auction are toned to remove the brownish green tone and provided a deep rich black.
 * 4) Most reported tests over the years in technical photography publications gave selenium-toned prints twice the longevity of untoned prints.

After further looking into the matter, I was able to find this link, which specifies that selenium does indeed provide a rich black, and longer baths produce a muted rich brown, "reminiscent of warm Afga paper". Link: https://piezography.com/piezography/selenium/ I can't find info on the tests in photography publications, nor the museum gallery statistics, but being honest, that's probably because I didn't look very hard. Someone more familiar with how to do it right (rather than just how not to do it wrong) should probably integrate this information. Imroy seems to care about the article and be proficient in wiki markup, from what I'm seeing, so he may consider this a request that he take care of it. 47.224.217.211 (talk) 19:41, 17 February 2021 (UTC)