Indeed. I would avoid heating those prints. The oily solvent may still stain. They do dry out virtually completely at some point.
not sure if this belongs here - I have been doing some photogravure intaglio prints from my digital images. Using the direct to plate process with a fairy linear curve in QTR. Printed on hahnemuhle durer copperplate with black ink.... was messing around with doing some gum layers over the intaglio prints. Was using some prints that were not "perfect" but had some small flaws/uneven inking etc. Decided rather than using gum layers I would to try just hand paint in some watercolor over the print. Now I have absolutely NO skill in watercolor or painting, but decided to give it a try - I was surprised how it came out - not perfect but not too bad either. Wondering if others have gone down this path - sort of like old silver gelatin B&W prints that were hand colored.......
City Gate in Gerace, Italy - Calabria
View attachment 387145
I've been attempting to use the Jacquard Solarfast UV-sensitive dyes to make CMYK prints. This stuff really does seem more designed for fabrics rather than paper as it's truely a pain to work with and the results seem extremely variable on paper. The worst aspect so far is that the colour density seems very low (but also extremely variable!), the yellow stains like crazy and the 'black' I can't get to print as anything other than a light chocolate brown...
This is my first CMYK print, after linearising each of the colour channels but without doing any colour calibrations. I'm going to title this print "Clown Vomit". I'm not sure why the magenta layer decided to print so strongly this time around but it overpowers all the other layers (I even printed the cyan layer twice to try to get its density up).
I'm not sure how much time or effort I should put into it to be honest, I'm sure there are things I could be spending my time on that are much more likely to produce good results.
On its own, it does not look so bad as a duocolor. Did each separate channel test print reflect the respective true color?
:Niranjan.
No the Solarfast dyes aren't anything close to CYMK. Cyan is actually their blue dye, yellow is more of an orangey-yellow, magenta is actually their violet dye and the black turns out brown.
I'm not going to bother following through with this I think, although it is tempting to use cyanotype and coffee toned cyanotype as the cyan and black layers respectively. Of course if I did that I'd have to print the colour layers out of order due to chemical necessity (toned cyanotype black layer first, then regular cyanotype, then yellow, then magenta).
For reference here are some coffee toned cyanotypes I made today on two different kinds of paper. It's crazy how much faster, easier and better quality these 4 prints are vs. something I could get with the solarfast dyes.
No the Solarfast dyes aren't anything close to CYMK. Cyan is actually their blue dye, yellow is more of an orangey-yellow, magenta is actually their violet dye and the black turns out brown.
I'm not going to bother following through with this I think, although it is tempting to use cyanotype and coffee toned cyanotype as the cyan and black layers respectively. Of course if I did that I'd have to print the colour layers out of order due to chemical necessity (toned cyanotype black layer first, then regular cyanotype, then yellow, then magenta).
For reference here are some coffee toned cyanotypes I made today on two different kinds of paper. It's crazy how much faster, easier and better quality these 4 prints are vs. something I could get with the solarfast dyes.
Andrew, really nice, I particularly like the bridge on the far left . Looks like minimal staining - care to share any info on the papers/process - I assume you use "regular" coffee.....
Dave
Thanks
Far left and far right are the same paper, which is just a cheap 230 gsm hot-press watercolour paper re-branded by the local art store (the store is called Gordon Harris, but they don't make the paper). It's great because it basically doesn't stain, but unfortunately they seem to have changed paper supplier or something recently because the new paper doesn't print anywhere near as nicely and has a weird linear texture to it.
The middle two prints are a different paper I'm trying. They're Fluid brand hot-press 300 gsm watercolour paper. It prints really nice with a super smooth tonal range, but unfortunately stains a lot more than the cheap store-brand stuff. Still acceptable I think, would look fine with a cream coloured matt board when framed.
My process is to wait at least a day after printing the cyanotype, pre-soak in water for a few minutes then lay the print face down in coffee for 30 minutes before washing, no bleaching. The coffee mix is 6 tablespoons of instant in 3 litres of water (I do a few prints at once). Whether the paper stains a lot or not seems entirely dependent on the paper, and I assume how it's sized and with what. I wish the fluid paper had whatever the store brand stuff has that makes it stain-free as it really is much nicer paper.
Hi Dave, nice work as usual.Just getting back in the dim room - decided to try a cyano on Hahnemuhle Sumi-e paper after watching a Bill Schwab video on coating of thin papers,,,
Hi Dave, nice work as usual.
I did a quick spin through Bill's yootoob channel and couldn't find the one on coating thin papers...any chance you have the link stashed for easy retrieval?
Thanks. Managed to find it here, starting at about the 10 minute mark:it is actually the one about world cyanotype day - he does a HPR and a Sumi-e print and shows how to do the thin Sumi-e by wetting the back and sticking it his coating station and using a roller to apply the solution. Here is another I did on a piece of cheap "tracing paper", did three and this one was the best and didn't rip in the processing....
Dave
His method (for 80gsm) varies greatly from what I've been using with 30gsm Kozo.
I've been tearing the paper a bit larger than the image, to give a thin pure black border. I found coating the paper when dry to be near impossible in that the paper kept absorbing well past where the brush strokes were. This was a test with just water and you can see how far it kept absorbing past the image area:
View attachment 391998
What I do now is first place the paper on a sheet of glass then brush the paper with distilled water, ensuring it lays flat and is well coated. Then I pat dry with paper towel until the liquid sheen is off the paper, and coat with sensitizer right out to the edges. The pre-moistened paper takes up sensitizer very evenly. Once coated it stays on the glass and is placed on a horizontal surface with a fan blowing air over it for at least 30 minutes until dry. It stays stuck to the glass and dries very flat. The processed prints are also dried on glass.
Here are a couple tests showing the torn edges and coating the whole paper. Later, when 'serious' prints are done, I'll do a better job of tearing for a cleaner more balanced border:
View attachment 392000
Getting close to ordering some hand made Gampi ranging from 21gsm to 30gsm. Kinda gives my stomach butterflies!
Thanks...they are untoned Argyrotypes. Have Palladium on hand for when the hand made Washi arrives.Murray,
Thanks for that information - I am used to working with 140-190 lb papers, so the sumi-e seemed very thin to me; however I see that there are many types of papers much thinner. I will have to give this a try and see how it works, especially for the drying steps. I am just sort of experimenting with these thinner papers just to see how they looked in cyano. I had done several photogravures on the sumi and I really like the prints.
BTW those are nice prints, clearly not cyano - Pl/Pt or kallitype I assume... but good tonality and Dmax.
Again thanks for the tips....
Dave
Hi Andrew...are you using pin registration methods, and if so, why the double set?A recent coffee toned cyanoptype
Hi Andrew...are you using pin registration methods, and if so, why the double set?
Egad...can't imagine the difficult, head scratching, innumerable testing effort behind those three paragraphs!Yes I am, although because I'm only doing a single exposure on this sheet it's not actually that useful (other than lining my screen up to the sensitive region of the paper).
The main reason for the holes is that I originally designed my setup so that I could tile together multiple exposures onto a single sheet of paper with perfect registration between them. To do this, I built my LCD display (used as a digital negative) and UV light source into a single box with handles that I can pick up and holes that locate onto pins that are part of my registration board. The registration board itself sits flat on the table and has a number of pins sticking up that can be used to both hold the paper and also locate the exposure unit in different places relative to the paper.
In theory for making prints larger than my LCD screen I could make one exposure in one location, pick up the exposure unit and put it down onto another set of pins that locate the screen in a different location to the first exposure and the two exposures could be blended together into a single print. This didn't work in practice, but I still use the setup for making single-exposure prints because it works well.
In most cases I'm exposing A4 sheets which fit between the registration pins and so don't need any holes cut (I just tape the paper to the board so it doesn't move) but this print was done on 12x16" paper which was large enough that I had to cut holes in it to clear the pins. I cut the holes in the paper with my laser cutter, you can see two of them are oval to allow for the paper to change length a little without buckling.
Egad...can't imagine the difficult, head scratching, innumerable testing effort behind those three paragraphs!
I used to use sharp & unsharp masking techniques enlarging 4x5 negatives, so have a glimmer of insight into what you describe.
Thanks for the info
Thanks but no thanks. I use the minimum computery techno gadgety thingies possible to get my digitally enlarged negatives to where I need them to be!!!!Check out this thread (particularly page 2 and 3) for some details:
Using an LCD screen as a 'digital negative' in alt-process contact prints
Yeah I'm not ready to give up just yet, I still have a few more things I want to try and I had a similar battle with the light field correction that now works quite well. I think the hardware and software parts aren't insurmountable but the physical and chemical processes of actually producing...www.photrio.com
Frustratingly close to working, but not working and not really repeatable. So rather than spend more effort trying to tile exposures I'll have to be satisfied with printing ~8x10 sized prints for now and I'm working on a UV enlarger to let me make larger prints in the future.
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