Selenium toning Color negatives? Anyone tried this? I wonder? Or thought of other ways to intensify color negs.?

-- Patrick Locke (patricklocke@yahoo.com), August 12, 2001

Answers

Selenium tone and most other toning techniques used for B&W photography doesn't work on color films or papers that do not contain image forming silver. Toning does not intensify dyes.

I have not tried intensifying color material. Because this is a B&W photo forum and is not the best place to ask that question.

-- Ryuji Suzuki (rsuzuki@rs.cncdsl.com), August 12, 2001.

I bring it up because I wind up printing from color negatives. An am now starting to do some carbon printing. I wonder how I can increase the density in color negative. Is there something else that will attach to the dye... Also color has no silver? I did not know. silly but i always thoought a color neg was silver but was develpeloped in a stain... like my pyro negs are stained... I really don't understand color.. anyhow.

-- patrick locke (patricklocke@yahoo.com), August 12, 2001.

Color negatives developed by the C-41 process no longer contain silver. As the silver is developed, dye-coupling reactions activate the color dyes that make the final image. The bleach/fix stage then removes all of the silver. "Fix" means a chemical that will remove undeveloped silver, which is done for conventional B&W negatives. "Bleach" means a chemical that will remove developed silver. Since no silver is left, there is no silver for the selenium to react with and selenium won't intensify the negative.

If you want higher contrast, you could try a higher contrast paper. If your negatives are underexposed, perhaps some copy negative process would help a little. For color, some of these adjustments are easier by scanning and then making adjustments in the digital realm.

-- Michael Briggs (MichaelBriggs@earthlink.net), August 12, 2001.