Stability & Aesthetics: A Look into Photo Toners

Stability & Aesthetics: A Look into Photo Toners

During some photo restoration consultations, a client will say, “I do not want to change the color of this photo. It looks old and original like this.” The color they are referring to is usually black and yellow or faded sepia. In most cases, those colors–or photo tones–are not original to the print; it is a sign of degradation. These images have faded or shifted in color because they are aging and deteriorating. We understand wanting a photo to look historically accurate, but a print’s current tone is sometimes only a hint of what the original tone looked like. 

To understand this phenomenon, you need to know what photo toning means.

What are Photo Toners?

Photo toning is a valuable and important creative tool in the darkroom. Bertrand Lavédrine provides this definition:

Toning is a chemical processing treatment applied to a photographic print to change its appearance and/or improve its stability. It involves the combining of the silver of the image particle with a chemically stable (noble) metal such as gold or platinum or with other chemical elements such as lead, selenium, sulfur, or others.

A portrait of a woman in brown tone and sepia. This is an example of two different photo toners.

Toners come in a range of colors. Common photo toners include:

  • Brown: a very crisp dark brown and white
  • Sepia: a creamy warm brown and yellow 
  • Selenium: purple
  • Iron: blue
  • Copper
  • Gold
  • Red
  • Green

Stability is very important for photographers and impacts their printing decisions. Photographers want their final photos to endure. For example, mid-19th century photographers noticed that albumen prints faded fast and needed a toner to stabilize the image and improve longevity. A Scientific American article from 1900 provides a recipe for printers to use a “solution of bichloride of mercury more or less acidulated” to help bring “good purple tones” to their albumen prints. Without toning, we wouldn’t have many of those images today. When you compare a silver print from the late 1800s to a color photo from 1970, the photo from the 1800s usually has more detail and less fading than the color photo.

However, some toners, such as iron and copper, are less stable than others. They still produce interesting images. This scientific process is as much about aesthetics as it is about stability. Some photographers use toners to convey emotion or mood in their art. For instance, a blue tone can evoke a cold, mysterious feel in an image. Gold tone is warm and friendly. Photographers created–and continue to create–some beautiful images using this technique.

This is a cyanotype portrait of a young woman on a porch. This is an example of a type of photo toner.

Photo Toning Today

People still use photo toners in the darkroom and digital photography. The filters you use on Instagram or your preferred photo editing software are a form of photo toning. You use them with intention; it’s an artistic decision just like the ones 19th- and 20th-century photographers made. It’s fun to make some wild, funky art.

It’s important to note that darkroom toners are highly toxic and can cause some serious health and environmental issues. Princeton University outlines a list of hazards and precautions on its website, including:

  • “Sulfides release a highly toxic hydrogen sulfide gas during toning, or when treated with acid.” 
  • “Selenium is a skin and eye irritant and can cause kidney damage.”
  • “Gold and platinum salts are strong sensitizers and can produce allergic skin reactions and asthma, particularly in fair-haired people.”
  • “Thiourea is a probable human carcinogen since it causes cancer in animals.”

They recommend wearing gloves and goggles, utilizing proper ventilation, and avoiding certain chemicals or combining some toners with acids. This is serious stuff. Some professionals will not handle these chemicals today.

There are natural photo toning solutions available online ranging from soaking your photo in wine to using food coloring. If you have a print with a digital backup, you can try whatever you want. We haven’t used these techniques, so we cannot recommend them or comment on their effectiveness. However, if you have a 130-year-old photo of your ancestors, we do not recommend bathing it in your favorite Merlot. An antique image is fragile and introducing it to any toner–natural or otherwise–will destroy the photo. 

Instead, we recommend toning through photo restoration. A professional will be excited to restore your image to a historically accurate tone or show you different toning options. With this process, you can test to see if the image looks best in a brown tone or something that seems a little weird. Try out a dark purple or blue. Either way, your original stays the same. It can be hard to envision your image in a different photo tone when you’ve only seen it as a black and yellow or faded sepia print. Photo restoration is a creative tool for you and your family’s history.