Ideally you want a negative with a density of 2.4, but anything from 1.8-3.0 will work. The density of the negative will determine how many layers and exposures will be used to make the print. Higher density = more layers. Below 1.8, the number of layers drops to three which causes staining in the highlights and makes it difficult to achieve a dense black. When making silver negatives, develop the film for about twice the recommended time. Normally this approach would cause a fair bit of staining in the negative, but Delta 100 works quite well when overdeveloped. You want it to be dense! Borut Peterlin makes some of the best negatives I have worked with. I highly recommend his workshops.

Start by making stock solutions in beakers following the recipes below.  These don’t correspond to any specific layer, and will probably need to be adjusted.   

Step 1: Determine the density of the negative. Start by coating a sheet of paper with the B emulsion and let it dry. Place the paper and negative face-to-face and bracket exposures. If there is a sky or white shirt (the lightest part of the image), this is the part of the image you want to focus on. Expose the white area for a random series of times, for example, 8, 12, 16, and 20 units. Develop in tap water for two minutes. You are looking for the shortest exposure that has tone, or the longest exposure that still has pure white in the image. All you are looking at is the white point, don’t worry about the contrast of the rest of the image. In the example below the ideal exposure should be between 4 and 8 units. (photo by Jesper Korneliusen)

You can repeat the process and fine-tune the exposure, or just guess that it should be about 6 units. It’s unlikely you will get this close on the first try. Most likely the exposure will be way too long (when you develop, none of the PMF washes away), or way too short (all the PMF washes away and no image is visible).   

Step 2: Coat a small piece of paper with the B emulsion and let it dry. Put the paper face to face with a Stouffer step wedge and expose it for the time you calculated in step 1. In this case, we’ll expose the step wedge for 6 units. Develop the step wedge for two minutes in tap water and look for the first step that has a pure white. This tells you the density of the negative. In the photo below the density is 2.4.

Step 3: Enter the exposure time and negative density into this Separations Calculator Tool. Notice how the density of the negative determines the number of layers. The separations calculator will provide exposure times and the number of layers, as well as the color for each layer. If you want to use a spectrophotometer, here’s an excel file that provides the same information with luminance values. 

Step 4: Next we need to adjust the stock solutions of PrintMaker’s Friend so they match the patches shown in the separations calculator. We can do this either visually or with a spectrophotometer. For visual matching, adjust the brightness and color temperature of your monitor until a piece of white paper matches the white on your screen. You can also take a screenshot of the patches and print them.

With a small brush, about 5-10mm wide, coat a small patch of the solution A and another small patch of the solution B on a sheet of paper. Hold the two patches up to your screen, next to the printed reference, or read them with a spectrophotometer. We are looking for the best match. In the example below, neither matches perfectly. A is too light and B is too dark. Let’s mix them together in equal parts, and test. Great, it matches perfectly, so we’ll call this Layer 1.

With a larger brush, coat the whole sheet of paper with Layer 1. Let it dry, then expose it with UV light.

With the small brush again, coat some solution B and C on top of Layer 1. In the example below it looks like solution C matches perfectly. Label this as layer 2. Then, with a larger brush, coat the remaining paper without patches on top of Layer 1. Let it dry then expose it with UV.

Continue with the remaining layers. You should end up with something like the chart below.

Step 5: Make a print using the exposure times from step 3, and the recipes from step 4. Coat a sheet of paper with the layer 1 emulsion, dry, and expose. When you coat the second layer, coat quickly, you don’t want to melt the first layer. Dry the second layer, then expose. Do this for the remaining layers, then develop once all layers have been coated and exposed.

Step 6: Up until now we have been concerned with matching the exposure of the process to the density of the negative and creating a nice smooth tonal scale with no banding. Now we must adjust the contrast of the process to the negative. The easiest way to do this is to take a photo of the print and bring it into photoshop.

In the example below, the print is too light.

To change the contrast of the process we are going to change the pigment concentrations of the layers. Remember, the exposure time dictates where on the tonal scale the tone is placed, and the pigment concentration dictates how light or dark a layer is/the contrast of the print. This is why a long exposure is used to place the light tones in the highlights of the print, and a short exposure is used to place the blacks in the shadows of the print. If the print is too light, we need to use a higher concentration of pigment, but how should the pigment concentrations be adjusted? We have a reference that we used to create the original recipes for each layer, so lets add that to our image in photoshop.

Now adjust the image with a curve until the image looks good. I covered up the left part of the reference patches so you can see the difference. The left patches show the original goals, and the right shows the new goals.

Now we just need to repeat step 4, matching the new goals. If you are using a spectrophotometer, you can read the gray value of the patches in Photoshop, then use this solver to calculate the new goal Luminance values.   

Step 7: Make a print. The exposure times are the same as before, just the recipes for each layer have changed.

It’s a lot of work to get to this point. It takes me about four hours to go through this whole process. However, once I figure out a calibration for a single negative, as long as the rest of my negatives are the same, i.e. Delta 100 developed for twice the recommended time, then I can just skip to step 7 and print.

Have fun with split toning, and well as dodging and burning. Anything you can do in photoshop with curves, toning, or dodging and burning, you can do in the analog world with PrintMaker’s Friend.