PrintMaker’s Friend is a synthetic water-soluble photopolymer. It is used as a drop-in substitute for gum arabic and dichromate in gum printing. For instructions, please visit this page.
PrintMaker’s Friend
18.00€ – 136.00€
I will restock PrintMaker’s Friend once I finish the second edition of my book on gum printing. Most likely January 2026. All bottles contain 500g of PrintMaker’s Friend, which will produce 15-50 8×10″ prints. An 8×10″ BW print costs about 0.36 euros, and a color print about 1.15 euros.
If you are in the USA, you can avoid high shipping costs by ordering on Amazon. Only the kit is available on Amazon at the moment.
Georg Sedlmeir (verified owner) –
Looking for a replacement for gum dichromate, I read about Printmaker’s Friend on alternativephotography.com and was eager to try it.
The instructions on the website in combination with Calvin’s videos about the process and about coating are detailed enough to get you started, even though I am looking forward to the pending addendum to his The Technical Guide To Gum Printing. I recommend signing up to groups.io and the Printmaker’s Friend Facebook site for extra information. While you can get fairly good results just winging it I think it is worth the effort to go through a proper calibration process with tools of your choice. I use QTR in combination with R. Boutwell’s Quick Curve DN.
You can get a lot of prints from one bottle of PMF and I consider the pricing to be very fair. The emulsion is easy to use, I recommend little plastic containers like Tupper with a lid for storing the different dilutions.
A darkroom is essential, the emulsion is very light sensitive. With an 80W LED vacuum frame for prints up to 60cmx50cm, my exposure times max out at 42 seconds for layer 1 when making a 7 layer print. PMF layers dry fast and printing is straightforward. Developing with just water is a breeze. I love having a non toxic gum dichromate alternative and PMF has become my process of choice.