Digital BW, The Print

Clayton,



I have routinely used Renaissance Wax on my silver gelatin prints. It
protected the surface, made spotting and etching invisible, and "enriched"
the shadows.  By "enriched" I mean the shadows had a greater luminosity -
they "glowed" more.  I didn't darken the shadows, just made them richer.



I did some tests of coatings on Innova F Type Gloss Ultra Smooth paper
using Premier Print Shield and  Chem Jet Semigloss spay coatings and the
Renaissance Wax from Light Impressions.  The prints were made on an Epson
2400 using the stock Epson K3 inks with PK. I treated a print after it had
air dried for 24 hours by masking sections to allow for a 6 fold test on
one print  The best "look" was from the wax treatment with no initial
spray - It had the most shadow luminosity and detail plus no gloss
differential that I could see.  The 2nd best was an initial spray of
Premier Print Shield followed by a wax job after letting the sprayed print
dry for a day.  The 3rd place winner was just the Premier Print Shield.
The 4th place was the plain print with no spray or wax.  I didn't like the
Clear Jet Semigloss spay as it seemed to dull the print but did make a
uniform look with no gloss differential.  All of the coating techniques
eliminated the gloss differential. The waxed only print had a uniform
"shine" to the surface just barely a little more than the unwaxed print
but without the gloss differential.  This is a non-issue to me as I mount
everything behind Tru-Vue Museum Glass which eliminates glare as well as
knocking out the UV.



I have just received some Crane Museo Silver Rag and am doing the same
tests I did with the Innova F Type Gloss paper.  I'll report back in a
couple of days with results on coatings for Silver Rag.



Cheers,





TK



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