Hello Everyone,

Can anyone tell me if the yellow sediment in Nelson's Gold Toner can be filtered out or does it need to remain. Mine has never fully sedimented out over the last year and its a pain to use with the extra steps of cleaning. Also has anyone tried split toning Nelson's with Selenium? Gold first followed by Selenium. Thanks everyone.

-- Kevin Kemner (kkemner@tatesnyderkimsey.com), January 23, 2001

Answers

Yes, it is safe to go ahead and filter out the sediment.

I have done a lot of split toning with gold and selenium, but I always used the selenium first. The gold has a tendency to tone the entire print, which seems to prevent the selenium from taking hold, but if you use selenium first you can still gold tone, no problem. You probably already know that you need to print a little lighter if you plan to do this kind of heavy toning.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edb@unblinkingeye.com), January 24, 2001.

When split toning, you need to do Selenium first, followed by gold. I believe this is because the toners work in different ways. Selenium works by replacing the silver while gold tones by coating them with a colloid of gold. So the color with gold toning is a rsult of the silver seen through the gold colloid. Selenium toner has the ability to get past the colloid and change the colour of the silver halide molecule beneath, a change visible through the colloid. Cheers, DJ.

-- N Dhananjay (ndhanu@umich.edu), January 24, 2001.