t advocate this, as it is important to take
the print from the toning bath at just the right moment, and, as the
toning process is short (six or seven minutes is usually sufficient even
for the deepest red) you need to watch the print all the time. In the
toning operation note that a constant quiet motion of the tray, to keep
the solution moving over the print, is essential to success.

I have already given, in an earlier paragraph, the order in which the
colors come. But that order was for a normal print. Some prints behave
differently, and it is in the control of these unavoidable variations with
different prints that skill and success come. A print of a half-tone
subject against a jet-black background, a portrait, for instance, will
hardly follow the normal order in the appearance of colors. This because
the half-tones will be brown and even red-brown before the toning solution
has changed the dense black deposit of the background at all. If the
toning was stopped at this stage, some very pretty effects in double
toning might result.

From this explanation of the toning process, the discerning reader will
perceive the need for caution in selecting the best kind of a print for
uranium toning. Thus a print which has a bald-headed sky will tone only in
the body of the print, but if there is any tint at all to the sky, it also
will tone, giving an effect not much to be desired except for sunset or
sunrise pictures. If white high-lights are desired in the toned print,
they must be white originally and not the least bit fogged. As
double-toned effects in a print are not usually desirable, those prints
having deep black shadows or dark masses will be avoided. The best kind of
print for this method of toning is one fully exposed and slightly
under-developed, since, when the uranium does take hold of the shadows, it
makes for an increase of contrast.

Experience is the best teacher, and I could not begin to describe in
detail what the reader can himself ascertain from a few experiments. Some
prints needing contrast should be carried far in the toning solution;
others, not needing contrast, will give better results if they are toned
only through the browns, and so on. The reader who can spend a Saturday
afternoon with a few bromide prints, varying in character, will learn more
from his experimenting than I could tell him in many pages. For these
experiments waste or imperfect black prints can be used with practical
economy,