Platinum Palladium Printing: Getting Started

When I decided to take up platinum palladium printing, I didn’t know where to find expert advice to guide the many challenges I would face. I might have saved an enormous amount of time and considerable expense on materials if I had a guide to the best sources of information for making digital negatives, coating paper correctly, mixing chemicals, and calculating exposure time. That’s what I hope to provide here.

In this summary of the ins and outs of platinum palladium printing, I point to where to find the best chemistry, ink, equipment, and software. Next, I will recommend my sources for best practices, procedures, and workflow. Finally, I list practitioners of the art I admire most and what I think the future holds for the revived interest in this so-called alternative process. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive in.

My First Exposure

If you developed black and white photographs in a darkroom as I did as a teenager, you probably remember the first time you dipped exposed photo paper into the developer tray and gradually watched an image emerge. It seemed like magic or at least some kind of unknowable alchemy.

Back then, I believed silver gelatin was the only black and white method I could hope to master. I was blissfully unaware that some prominent photographic artists were rediscovering the 19th-century method known as the platinotype—or similarly, the palladiotype, black and white photo processes once wildly popular that became almost extinct by the 1930s.

In 2016, after 25 years of shooting with a digital camera, I returned to occasionally shooting black and white using 35mm and medium format cameras. While working on plans for building a darkroom, I began reading about photography’s early history, art, and science. Platinum palladium prints by Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Steichen, printed in the late nineteenth century, enchanted me.

Other photographers I admired—but whose works I had only seen reproduced in books—were deeply engaged with platinum palladium printing: Edward Weston, Andre Kertész, Paul Strand, Imogen Cunningham, Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, among many more.

I immediately set a new goal to begin platinum palladium printing myself and, from that moment on, became fixated on the virtues of contact printing—sparked by happy memories of my teenage attempts to print black and white photographs in my first makeshift darkroom. But I had little idea of where to start again.

Platinum Palladium Printing: Links and Books

Describing the entire platinum palladium printing process from camera to framed print would undoubtedly fill a book. Indeed, a few good comprehensive books now do a fine job explaining the myriad details. Some authors will guide you with detailed step-by-step instructions, but I discovered there are several process variations and differing approaches to controlling quality.

This post includes links to some favorite books (and e-books) in the notes at the end of this article. You’ll also find links to some interesting and reliable online resources for platinum and palladium that I wished I’d had when starting this journey.

Silver Takes First Place

It’s no wonder silver rose in popularity as the most popular photosensitizing metal. Compared with silver, pre-coated platinum papers of yesteryear were slow, requiring lengthy contact exposures to direct sunlight.

Glass or film negatives held in a direct contact frame pressed under glass against the sensitized paper is known as contact printing. Unfortunately, artificial light sources lacked sufficient ultraviolet wavelengths making projected enlargements impossible. As a result, making large Pt/Pd prints entailed using hard-to-come-by large format cameras or contact-printing an inter-negative and thus sacrificing image details.

Platinum-palladium prints of the past required exposures ranging from a few minutes to an hour, and making a good print involved much guesswork and experimentation. As a result, producing a pleasing image was demanding and unforgiving. In photography’s evolution from platinum to silver gelatin, three platinum print qualities were lost—the rich tonal range, the luxurious matte paper surface, and resistance to fading. Fading prints were such a big problem in the early days of photography that the Royal Photographic Society organized a Fading Committee to award prizes for photographic permanence.

Theoretically, platinum prints could resist fading for many decades because the image-forming “platinum black” sinks directly into the paper fibers—without the fragile emulsion sitting on the paper surface as with gelatin-based processes. One caveat: the longevity of platinum prints hinges on completely clearing traces of iron residues from the paper, or a buildup of acid can form, causing the paper fibers to become brittle and sometimes appear as yellow-brownish discoloration known as “foxing.”

Irving Penn, one of the world’s most well-known photographers, sequestered himself in his darkroom for over a decade at the height of his career. He experimented with platinum palladium printing chemistry, papers, and adhesives (to dimensionally stabilize the sheet for multiple exposures trying to produce deeper shadows) until his death. Unfortunately, many of Penn’s most iconic prints now show signs of oxidation as traces of iron salts remained and contaminated the paper.

The Brief History of Platinum Palladium Printing

In 1830 in Germany, the chemist and inventor Ferdinand Ghelan first observed a weak reaction of platinum to sunlight. Another German scientist, Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner, found that the sensitivity of platinum to light increased in the presence of ferric oxalate. Sir John Frederick William Herschel, a British astronomer, chemist, and botanist, made important discoveries leading to better image permanence. But it was not until 1873 that William Willis, a British inventor, advanced the chemistry of the platinum process significantly.

After twenty years of trying to stabilize it, Willis patented a small-scale workable platinum process in 1878. Willis then formed the Platinotype Company, which struggled to establish commercial success because they were still unable to mass-produce inexpensive pre-coated paper for the platinum palladium printing professional or hobbyist. However, by 1880, there was still no industrial-scale process to manufacture pre-coated platinum paper.

Within a couple of years, a pair of Austrian army officers, Giuseppe Pizzighelli and Arthur Baron V. Hubl, wrote a dissertation outlining a viable manufacturing process for preparing the paper.

In 1887, Pizzighelli patented the technique that came to be known as the “pizzitype.” Then, going toe-to-toe with Willis, he marketed his product as Dr. Jacoby’s Printing-out Paper.

Over the next hundred years, there were several other attempts to stabilize a platinum paper coating process to mass-produce it. But all met with only limited success or outright failure. Even Kodak, who pioneered the hobby of photography, tried and failed to introduce platinum paper to their devoted camera buffs.

In the early 1900s, weapons manufacturers discovered platinum was an effective catalyst in making explosives. The price of platinum, and platinum palladium printing skyrocketed, and with the outbreak of WWI, the government diverted all supplies to military use. Britain even outlawed the use of platinum for photographic purposes.

Russia controlled 90% of the world’s platinum supply before World War I, and all available platinum went toward the war effort. When Willis began marketing his paper, platinum was relatively cheap. By 1907, platinum had become 52 times more expensive than silver. Despite the high cost, platinum has had small but consistent use by fine art printers up to the present day, interrupted only by the two world wars, of course.

Eventually, pre-coated paper achieved wide popularity and sold for nearly thirty years. Starting in 1907, however, ready-to-print paper use fell into severe decline. Most producers stopped making platinum paper around 1916. Willis’ Platinotype Company closed in 1932, and most of its trade secrets disappeared. Finally, by 1937 no company was manufacturing platinum or palladium photo paper.

Platinum Palladium Printing and Iron

The key to the platinum palladium printing chemical process printing is iron, written as the symbol Fe, from the Latin “Ferrum.” When iron combines with other elements, it is oxidized (negative electrons are removed, rendering the iron atoms more positively charged or neutral).

Neutral iron can be in one of two possible states: Fe(III) or ferric oxalate is transformed temporarily into Fe(II) or ferrous oxalate when exposed to UV light. Ferrous oxalate is a reducing agent that reacts instantly with platinum or palladium salt solutions causing the metals to precipitate out of the solution as blackened nanoparticles that become trapped in the paper fibers.

Are you interested in learning more about platinum palladium printing chemistry? I encourage you to visit Dr. Mike Ware’s website and his concise description of the underlying chemical process in non-chemist language. As Dr. Ware points out, “there are several other iron-based processes such as those using gold (Chrysotype and Aurotype) or silver (Kallitype and Argentotype), or even mercury (Amphitype and Celaenotype), with appropriate changes in the chemistry, although the principles are the same.”

There are several variables to control in pursuit of producing exhibition prints. Printing a high-quality negative is not only the first but perhaps, the most important. Other variables include the properties and purity of the sensitized paper, the atmospheric conditions, the luminance, duration, and intensity of the UV light source used to expose the sensitized paper, and the mineral content and pH of the water in the clearing baths. It seems like a lot to manage, but producing a museum-quality fine art print is worth it.

Platinum palladium printing success is within reach of anyone with enough practice, patience, and money for the precious metals compounds. Of course, starting with a good negative is half the battle. Beyond that, there will be a few other challenges:

• Finding the ideal paper.
• Mixing chemistry precisely.
• Coating the sheet without imperfections.
• Maintaining perfect room temperature and relative humidity.
• Using a 320-400nm UV light source

Pure platinum (platinotype) prints have relatively higher contrast and cooler tones than pure palladium (palladiotype) prints that may have a warmer appearance with deep blacks and soft highlights. The combination of platinum and palladium can create an equilibrium between the two tonalities that enhances images formed by platinum palladium printing. An experienced printer can predictably control a platinum print’s tones within a wide range from warm to cool.

When all these factors conspire favorably, magic happens, and a fine print will reveal image details in even its deepest shadows. That’s what gets my heart racing.

Rare print collectors prize platinum and palladium prints because of their famous longevity. Fine art collectors seek them out because of their breathtaking subtlety. Part of the allure of platinum photos is that no two prints, even from the same negative, are ever the same because subtle variations in the coating and mixing phases of the sensitizer make them unique.

Piezography: A Black and White Inkjet System

After evaluating the options back in 2016, I started printing greyscale photos using the Piezography® system developed by Cone Editions Press (CEP). I found a few other competing methods offered online by other practitioners, printers, and ink vendors. However, after much research, it became clear that Jon and Cathy Cone and the crew at Cone Editions Press in Vermont had packaged the most versatile black and white printing solution.

Piezography® can yield the highest resolution and dMax (greatest ink density) necessary for a high-quality print. CEP continues to evolve and refine its ink technology and software each year. To this day, I believe it remains the best option for imaging fine art on an inkjet printer.

Cone’s proprietary system combines carbon pigment inks in sets of six to eleven shades designed to work with many legacy Epson printers. Customizable digital image correction curves called “quads” provide low-level parameters instructing the computer-controlled printhead to deposit layers of ink, building up pictorial values ranging from the lightest grey to opaque black.

Using the Piezography® system requires removing the OEM color ink cartridges from an Epson professional-level printer and replacing them with bigger refillable cartridges. This encapsulated nanoparticle Piezography® ink increases the resolution and tonal fidelity of the print threefold, far surpassing black and white photographs printed using Epson’s proprietary black and white (ABW) system. In addition, the Piexography® system can print high resolution, linearized negatives of practically any size.

PiezoDN®: the Digital Negative Version of Piezography®

Photographers today would have to settle for far inferior digital negatives without Jon Cone’s and his collaborator Walker Blackwell’s years of innovation and experimentation. Cone and Blackwell’s work with inks, inkjet coatings, high-resolution scans, and software together make up the digital negative system known as PiezoDN®.

Shortly after introducing Piezography® in the 1990s, Cone and company turned their attention to the challenge of high-quality monochrome digital negatives.

Cone experimented with every commercially-available inkjet printer transparent polyester film on the market for his inkjet film substrate. Fortunately, he found one capable of accepting their pigment-rich inks in sufficient quantity to achieve nearly 100% opacity (dMax), a prerequisite of digital negatives.

Most failed in testing until they struck on a product previously used for overhead projector transparencies called Pictorico made by Mitsubishi Imaging. (CEP recommends only the ultra-premium version of the product due to its unique crystalline coating.)

While the Cones and their company have done a thorough job documenting and making instructions widely available, in my experience, mastering it can be challenging even for the most persistent and dedicated photographers. The Piezography® system requires a significant investment of time, money, and patience to understand and incorporate into a workflow. However, the superior results are worth it.

Anyone can start using the publicly available Piezography® Community Editon for free. Still, I recommend purchasing the Peizography Professional® package of software and the PiezoDN® upgrade if you are serious about any alternative process printing.