Digital BW, The Print

> Thanks for the tips! A new medium - "Digital Albumen Prints"
> sounds impressive. I wonder if I'll ever find the time to try.
> 
> I assume that the soap is used to break surface tension, what
> does the sugar do? Was it boric acid that was used as the insect
> inhibitor?
> 
> Tim

The albumen pre-print coating is the easiest to use - really simple and it
perks up apparent color saturation in the print.  It does not increase the
paper's ability to hold detail though.  That would probably require some
sort of impervious barrier between the coating and the paper (and albumen
definitely isn't impervious on its own).  With an egg white coating the
whole image will wash right off with water unless you use a post printing
water proof coating.  And if you do that you get some of the same apparent
saturation increase that the egg whites provide.  My solution was to just go
with commercially coated papers and leave the albumen to others.  But it was
fun in the early days when there were no commercially coated art papers and
it might be useful if you have a special oriental paper or other hand-made
special fiber you want to print on.  And "digital albumen" *does* sound
impressive!

Beats me on the sugar additive to the gelatin coating -- my recipe was just
plain gelatin but it cures pretty darn hard all by itself.  I found the
sugar/soap recipe on an interesting web site and thought I might try it some
day since I was looking for something to keep the gelatin more pervious.
Soap might do it.  I sort of think the sugar is there in case you feel like
a late night snack and all that is around is some gelatin coated paper.
Might as well make it taste good.   Wouldn't add any boric acid if that was
a possibility.   I believe the real additive to gelatin coatings for insect
and mold suppression was a lot more toxic than boric acid though - probably
one of those things you can't get any more because they deplete the ozone
layer or cause cancer.

Dan