Cyanotype Toning 2: three easy methods

1. Introduction: Hi there, My name is Ben. I'm an artist and professor. And welcome to cyanotype toning number 23. Easy methods. If you're familiar with cyanotype, you know that that classic blue color is beautiful and that it's sort of the signature of this process. However, there's times when you want to deal with other colors, you want to introduce something different into your work. And so that's where toning comes in. Toning sanitizer is a beautiful way to be a hands-on with your images, to be manipulating and changing the colors in order to suit what you want. But it is also extremely experimental, which means there's gonna be some trial and error. There's gonna be some unexpected results. But if you're willing to put in the work, to put in the experiments, you can get some truly beautiful and unique results that ultimately you can repeat if you follow the same process. If you took my last class on toning sanitizers with household products, you'll remember we got some results that were more like a sepia like this or we got some that were more like a gray, blue-gray. And these are really beautiful variations in this class, of course will be starting from the classic blue cyanotype. But from there we're going to be toning. We're gonna be doing some duotone. We're gonna be doing some more brown sepia images, but some different methods. And then we're also going to be going towards a violet. And at the end we're actually gonna be trying our own variations on these processes in order to come up with something that is truly unique. I'm really excited to be diving into this class with you, to be teaching you three more simple processes that you can use to get the images to look exactly the way you want. It's gonna be fun, It's going to be experimental, and I'm ready to dive in. Let's go ahead. 2. Supplies: Hi there and welcome back. In this video, we're gonna be talking about the supplies you'll need for these toning processes. I am one thing to keep in mind is that I'm gonna be showing you all the supplies you'll need for each of the processes. But if you want to just choose one, you can only get the supplies for that. There's no reason you have to do all three of these the way I am. So let's go ahead and jump in. First. You're going to need some trees. Now there are dedicated dark room official trays that are very nice, but they're also not really necessary. You can use any old plastic tray that you have. So go ahead and use anything you have on hand. Now, ultimately, if you feel like you're gonna be doing this more than once, I'd recommend using something that you can dedicate to this purpose because you're gonna be putting in things that are like bleaches and stuff like that. So it might be best to try to use it just for this cyanotype alternative toning process. But for just a onetime use, I'm sure anything you have is probably fine and you'll just wash it out at the end. No problem. That's trace. To move the prints from one thing to the next. You're going to want some sort of tongue. And ideally, it should be something that isn't metal because again, cyanotype is reactive to metal. Now, technically the cyanotype process is done, we're toning, but I still like to avoid metal whenever possible when dealing with stuff like this. So you're going to want some sort of tray. Now, you can see I have a metal tongue, but the end is covered in silicone and I'm not going to be fishing around too much. So something like this, something made it a plastic. That should do the trick. You're going to need some cyanotype prints. Most toning processes work best with hardened prints that his prints that have aged at least 24 hours, which is what I have here. For the purposes of this class, I made a bunch of prints of the same negative over and over so that we have an even comparison. This is what I'm going to be using for this class. I highly recommend that you make at least more than one print two tone because toning is very experimental as I've said, and you might not be able to guarantee results even after you've done it a bunch of times. In fact, we're almost guaranteed that the results we see today are going to surprise me, even though I've done these processes before. Just because slight variations in the water you're using and the concentrations of the solutions you have will change things a little bit. So makes sure as you are making prints, make instead of one print make four, and then you have some latitude to be experimenting. By the way, I'm not gonna go into the details of what you need in order to make a cyanotype print if you need instructions on that, and then go ahead and see one of my earlier videos that I go into great detail about how to coat your own. What paper to use, where to get the chemistry involved to make a cyanotype print. All of that is in other classes on Skillshare that I recommend you check out first for the actual solutions we're gonna be using. One of them is going to be using black tee. Off the shelf from your local grocery store will work. And I happen to have some good old Lipton on hand. We're also going to be using borax or ax is like laundry booster and then it says detergent booster right here. And this is something they should be able to find at your local grocery store, maybe Target. And of course it comes in this ginormous box and we're only going to be using about a teaspoon of it, but you can add to your laundry after the fact I saved the one you have to be most careful about for last. And this is TSP try sodium phosphate. And this stuff is a heavy-duty cleaner. This is something that's used to clean surfaces. Like if you're working on your house, you can clean off paint surface and stuff. It's basically like a form of an acid that is, that you're mixing into liquid. This is something that once we get into the processes, you'll see how I use it. You can choose not to use it, but you won't be able to do that part of the process. So you'll see the results and see if it's worth feeling with it for you. Of course, there's all kinds of warnings on the box. So as you're dealing with this, take heed of the warnings, makes sure that if you are worried about splashing it, of getting things, wear gloves, wear glasses, and just as you're working, always work slow. You don't want to be in a rush. You don't want to accidentally be dropping a tray of this stuff. Makes sure that you are dealing with it with a proper caution. And ultimately, I think you'll find that the little bit of a hassle it is to deal with some chemistry like this is worth it in order to get the results that we'd like. All right, that's all we have for supplies. Let's go ahead and jump into the next video and start this first toning process. 3. Black Tea Duotone: Hi there and welcome back. This video, we're going to go through the steps for the black tea duotone process. So let's go ahead and get started. Let's jump right in. With this very simple toning process. What we're hoping for is a duotone image or a split image where we have very warm highlights and very cool shadows, right where the shadows are still mostly blue, maybe a little bit warmed up. But we have that split tone. And so here's a few things to remember. One, I have a tray of just clean water. This is for washing, rinsing in-between. And then I have our black tea. Black tea is mixed seven teabags to 1.5 liter of hot water, and it's steeped for about ten minutes, is squeezed out those bags. We have what's left here. This one's really, really easy. Essentially, we're just going to put it into the water, put it into the t, Take it out when we're happy with it and put it back into the water to rinse it out. That's all there is to it. What I always recommend is starting out with your least favorite print. This print came out a little too light. I don't think it's going to work that well, but I want to make sure I see what is going to be happening in the process before I use one of my favorite prints. So I'm going to start just by putting this into the water to get it wet. And you want all those fibers nice and wet before you put it in to your toner or even before if you were gonna be bleaching, putting it in a bleach bath, Do you want to put it in the water first so that it kind of evenly is able to get all of that on there. And I'm gonna go ahead and start getting one of my other prints. When you see this one is quite a bit darker, much better. I have higher hopes for that. I'm going to start getting that one wet. And you can see right now I'm using only one pair of tongs. That's basically because I'm gonna be rinsing them in this water in-between each one. So I'm not that worried about keeping it clean. And there we go. We just put this in. I'm just going to count to ten and lift up. You can see the highlights are starting to get a little warmer, but the blue is still pretty strong, so that's about ten seconds. Let's put that back in here and see how much of that warmth rinses out. That's looking like a pretty mild version that was just about ten, maybe 15 seconds. I'm gonna do the same thing with this one face down, remember to agitate it. You don't want any bubbles in there. Moving it around. I'm going to put this in for 15 seconds, flip it over. Pretty similar to the first one. I'm gonna leave it in bit longer. We'll see what we have right there. Thirty-seconds. Hold it from a corner, let it drip off of a corner to get as much of that tee off there's possible and put it in. You can say this is our test strip. It's very, very mild, but it is a little bit noticeable. What's interesting is you can see like the tone. This is what wasn't coded with a cyanotype chemistry in this area was the area that was coded is picking up a little bit more of that warmth, which is a nice effect. So I'm gonna go ahead and for the sake of comparison, will pull both these out. You can see it was got bleached a little bit. That would be the tannic acid in there working on the image. And there's definitely a warmer tone to the highlights. I'm just going to keep rinsing that, keep agitating our test. Again, just comparing the warmth of it. Definitely a lot warmer, but it doesn't seem like we've gotten gray highlights. The highlights still look nice and bright, which is pretty good. I'm happy with how that's gone. I'm going to flip those over so I know I'm more or less done with those. I'm going to get this one wet. And I have one more. So I'm gonna do one of these four maybe like a minute, a full minute. Here is our this is our A 30-second up top compared with a minute down below. There's not that much of a difference. What I'm concerned with with this process is of the paper getting stained so that the highlights become muddy. It doesn't seem like that's happening too much. The highlights haven't gotten that much darker in this one. I'm gonna go ahead and let this continue to rinse. I'm gonna leave the next one in there for quite a bit longer. I'm gonna go like five minutes and see if we can't get that blue to just shift a little bit more, and then we'll see which one we like better. So go ahead. I'm going to set my timer for five minutes and then we'll see what we have while we're waiting for that one to tone a bit longer. One thing I want to remind you is that this rinse bath is really, really important. That you want to make sure you get any excess chemistry out of there. Hopefully you're not rinsing way the toning that you are, you want to get any extra chemistry out of there to keep the final print as stable as possible. So make sure you are agitating. You're giving it time to actually rinse all those out. Of course, you could set up a rinse bath and a sink or something where there's freshwater flowing over the small prints, something like this is fine. And after I do a few, I just change out the water so that it's good to go. One thing I noticed right away, write this paper is noticeably darker, tan, toned. Then this one this was one minute, this was five minutes. So of course, that sort of makes sense. And we'll see if that holds up after rinses for a few minutes. And again, just as a sort of a point of comparison, if we have our original image. Here, you can see it's warmed up quite a lot. The detail in the highlights rather. And it's just kind of up to you how far you like that effect. There's certainly a very warm to cool shift going on from the highlights to the shadows. I can definitely see how this would be useful toning process in certain scenarios. Alright, we're going to look at these later. But just again for quick reference, we have the test, this was 30 seconds, one minute, five-minutes. And you can see for yourself what is happening with these prints. I'm gonna go take these to dry and we'll take a look at them in the final video to see which ones after they're dry. We really like. Alright, that's all we have for this Duotone process. In the next video, we're gonna go through the black tea and TSP process. We're gonna get some different results. Let's see what you get. I'll see you there. 4. Black Tea TSP: Hi there. This video, we're gonna be going through the black tea and TSP process, which is going to give us mostly a brown image or that's what I expect. So let's go ahead and jump right in. All right, so for this process, this is the black tea and TSP toning. The goal of this is to get a nice uniform brown. So not having any of the traditional blue, this is just gonna be straight brown. As a refresher, we're going to start with a rinse and we're going to go into the TSP to bleach the print and down, rinse off the TSP, then go into the toner, tone it to the desired level, then back in for a final rinse for the amounts that I mixed everything, the tea was the same as the last one. So at seven bags into a half liter of water steeped for about ten minutes, squeezed out. And that's the concentration of the T. For the TSP, I have 1.5 teaspoons into a half liter of water and just mixed. Once again, the TSP is the stuff that you want to be careful while handling. You just want to make sure you're not getting on your skin, you're not splashing it. Just deal with it cautiously. Once again, we are going to be toning this image. But first I'm going to use this as sort of a test. This one is definitely underexposed. So I am going to be putting it into especially the TSP to see how it reacts first. So let's go ahead and get this wet. Again. You get it wet so that the papers are sort of evenly evenly able to accept whatever bath you put it in. Getting that damp. I'm going to go ahead and drop it right into TSP. The goal of this is to actually let it bleach out. Can see it's starting to fade. Agitating. It's about thirty-seconds. That drip off as much as possible. We don't want any extra stuff. Then rinse. This is sort of acting as a stop bath. So whatever was happening, stops. Now, dump it into the toning Beth. You can see after the TSP, almost that whole image had faded except for the very dark shadows. Now after I put back into the black tea and a lot of that detail has come back. It's, it's pretty faint though, you know, it's like a light tan on a lighter tan sort of thing. Of course, there's still some of the blues in, in there. So I'm going to now I have three prints, the one that's in there and two more that are decent and prints that we're going to try some variations on those timings. I'm going to start do one for a little bit less time in the TSP. Little less time in the TSP. Keep agitating. Not going to let the whole image disappear. They're starting to work a little faster. That will go in. Flip that over, actually, let that sit there. These two. Go ahead and start. Remember you always want to make sure the bubbles are out from underneath of it. Keep agitating. Try a longer TSP bath where the image is pretty much gone. Just see what happens. This has been two minutes. Looking at that. Can you go ahead and even in one more minute speech, really going to work on this image. Everything with a darkest shadows gone. I'm gonna see if we just keep it going. See the image is still there, but it is very, very faint. Go ahead and take this one out. You can set off in there. This one I'm going to put in and we'll see what happens. This one, I'm going to try a very short TSP bath. All right. This one's been five-minutes. It doesn't appear to be getting any darker than this. We'll just rinse them. For me. This is really interesting. We see the one that I completely bleached out the image. And all the detail is there. It's just very faint. It's got a very narrow tonal range in that even the lightest is still kind of medium brown and the darkest is like a medium dark brown. So it's not very contrast the image, but all the image info that I had at the beginning still appears to be there. Just looks a little muddy. But in the right situation I can see wanting to have that sort of aesthetic in an image. This one is interesting. It definitely has a very strong split tone. The shadows, the darkest shadows are very blue still. And the highlight areas have turned this black tea light tan color. The one thing that I'm noticing is that the TSP kind of passes a threshold and then it instantly does away with a lot of the blue. I almost wonder if I had a weaker solution of TSP if that would be slower acting, so it would be easier to stop at exactly where you want it. This went a little bit farther than I intended it to when I had it in the TSP. I'd say these two are probably rinsed good enough for our purposes. You normally want these in there at least five minutes. And just to make sure they're getting all the extra chemistry out of there. Then there'll be good to go dry. Alright, that's all we have for the black tea and TSP method. We saw some variations in there and once they're dry, we'll take a look at them in the final video. All right, hopefully you had some good results. You were able to follow along with this black tea and TSP process. In the next video, we're actually going to be going through the violet toning process, really excited about this one. So let's go ahead and jump right in. 5. Violet: All right, welcome back. This one we're gonna be toning and hopefully getting the results of violet. This is using some basic household detergent. So we're gonna go ahead and jump right in. I'm excited for the results on this one. What we have in front of us is just a tray of clean water, then a tray with borax. Again, borax is like a detergent additive. Relatively safe to work with. Don't splash on in your eyes. The mixture I have here is a half teaspoon of borax to a half liter of water. And the borax, that part of the recipe is variable. So we're going to see the results we have. There might be an advantage to having more, there might be an advantage to having less. And through doing this process, you'll learn what you like better. This one very simply is gonna go into the water, into the borax. Once it gets to the tone we like into the water to rinse, and we are done as usual. I'm gonna start with a test print that didn't come out quite as dark as I'd like, just so I can see how everything is reacting. So start by just getting this wet. Allow the paper to deal with the chemistry in a uniform way. I'm going to actually just go ahead and get the next one went much better. Print Into should just be kind of a change of the chemistry. So we're just waiting for that change take place. Alright. I'm gonna pull this out. I wouldn't really call this violet per say. But it's definitely different than the original taken on different sort of blue color. Go ahead and put this slightly better print in and see what effect it has. About 30 seconds and it seems to have reached the same level as this other print that I had in there for a minute. So it looks like it is reaching its maximum right there. So it's really no reason to keep that in there any longer. I'm just going to go ahead and start rinsing that there. I'm gonna go ahead and put both of these prints in. Looks like there's maybe a slight bleaching effect going on. I'm going to pull one of these. Some of this, there's not that big of a difference, but there is a difference. This definitely has a bit more of a purply color to it. Then this one. Just going to go ahead and leave this in longer and see if what I was noticing about that bleaching effect is actually true. There's definitely, these prints started out almost identical in terms of their print, their exposure. And this one's definitely thinned out. So there's a very slow leaching that is going on, which makes sense. A lot of the household detergents stuff would eventually bleach AA cyanotype print. And so if you had a stronger solution, maybe that would act faster. And since we have a weaker one, all it's doing is like changing the color and very, very slowly bleaching it out. This one definitely has more robust shadows. This one is starting to thin out a little bit much, but we're gonna have to look at it once it dries to really figure out what's going on. In the next video, we're actually going to be doing some experimental combinations of the chemistry we've been using in order to try to get some new results. So I'll see you in the video. 6. Experimental Toning: We've tried three well-known documented toning processes with your cyanotype. But now I want to try something experimental. We know that we have these bleach baths. We know we have toning bads and I want to try combining these together in a way that I haven't seen documented before. We might end up with something unique, something that we've created together or we might end up with mud. And so let's go ahead and find that out together. Welcome back. This is a little bit of a bonus experimental video because right now we have the TSP, the black tea, the borax, and the water. And we've tested some of the combinations, but not all of them. I just wanted to go ahead and play a little because sometimes this is a way to find something. We'd like. I just have four more images that we're gonna try some different things with. And we're gonna start just that getting this one wet. And one of the things I'm curious about, especially is seeing kind of a comparison between the very, very slow bleaching of the borax. And then using this to tone compared to the much quicker bleaching of the TSP, then this the tone and we've already seen that. And so I might also try sort of a combo. Sometimes you can bleach a second time in order to bring up print back. So let's see here. Go straight into the borax. Now this is an underexposed print. It might not be the best one to see what bleaching does to it. We'll give it a try. All right, looks like the boar axis done its work. That off. Do a rinse and see the difference in those blues there. Blue to what they're calling them pilot. Which you might call dark blue from their strip that off and you go straight into black T. Next one. Try. Very, very quick. Bleach. The TSP to start with into black tea. Me that's looking very similar to just the straight black tea without the poor X, but we'll have to compare them side-by-side once they've dried. I'll let that rinse off. Now this one, I'm actually going to start the t. I'm going to bleach after the fact. See what's going on with that. All right. This is the one we did, a very short back TSP and then into the T. You can see the brown as sort of replace some more of that tone here. The brown is really only in the highlights. The rest still very blue because all we did was put it straight into the T's and now started with a t. I'm going to put it in the borax. See how changing that order effects things. I thought it was. If I can get a nice kind of warmer blue, that violet tone from the borax might go well with the warmer highlights from the black tea as well. Starting to fade a little bit. I don't want that in here. I'm just gonna see ESP borax, that TSP is so strong, it's hard to control. I would have to do such a dilute solution in order to try to control it over more time. And even then it might be too strong. It's pretty powerful stuff. This one, I don't think there's really going into work out the way at hoped. This was it for our experimental combinations of some of these that I've never necessarily tried. Some of them will be interesting. I think once they dry, we'll have to have a look. Some of them like this one. It doesn't seem like it's working so well, but we'll have to wait and see. All right, that concludes our toning processes. In the next video, we're going to talk about analysis. Look at the final images, see what we liked, didn't like, maybe some things we could change the next time we do this process. I'll see you there. 7. Final Analysis: Hi everyone and welcome back. Thanks so much for going through this class with me. I'm really excited. See some of the prints you made. I hope you're happy with the results you've been getting. I know for me there's a lot that happened the way it was supposed to and a few things that maybe didn't keep in mind with toning is that there's lots of variables at play, some of which are hard to control. For instance, one thing is I recently moved and so I'm gonna different township with different water supply. And the water seems to be acting slightly differently than I'm used to. Different balances of what's in there. We'll change the way the cyanotype reacts to it. So that's one variable I haven't locked down yet. Of course, if I used filtered water, that would help with that. But That's just an example that small variable, small changes in the print itself, the thickness of the negative you use. So that's how dense the print actually is. The exact combinations or concentrations of the solutions you use. All those things come into play. So if you have some results that didn't turn out the way you wanted, don't get discouraged. Think about what those variables are, and then make some minor adjustments. Try it again. I recommend that you continue on, that you keep trying until you get some results that you really liked. And out of all these prints, I did theirs, just a handful that I really go back to. But I kept notes. I know what I did. And now I could go back and if there's a print that I think that would work for, I could go back and recreate that exact toned look. So let's go ahead and dive into each of the processes. I'll show you the prints and you can make a judgment for yourself. And I'll talk about the things that I liked or didn't like. First, we have just the plain black tea and this is supposed to result in this sort of duotone image. Here's the test print, which again, this was a very thin print to begin with, so I won't worry about that one as much. Let's get into ones where I actually, the final print was actually better right here. This one was just in the T for about 30 seconds. You can see there's a warmth to the highlights. That is nice. And it gives that contrast between the cool shadow area. With thirty-seconds. It's pretty subtle if there wasn't this area at the top. Let me see if I can get that. There wasn't that area of the top of the white paper. You wouldn't necessarily notice right away that it had been toned. But when we put it in, Here's the print I have for control. Next to that you can see the overall warmth that this took on just from the black tea. That's a really nice simple toning to go on. That was thirty-seconds. Now compare that to over here we have full minute. In the video. It doesn't look like that big of a difference, but in-person it's definitely marginally darker, not that much, but a little bit darker. And so there does seem to be a fairly straight curve. More time means your highlights are going to be a little bit more tan. Then last, we have this one. Actually for this particular image, we have these storm clouds over a mountain across the lake. I really like how this came out. The blue started fading from blue and no longer reads really as a blue. It's this dark slate gray almost pushing towards black. And again, comparing this to the original, you know, these, these original images weren't exactly exactly the same or the prints weren't exactly the same. This one was marginally darker, but this one has a darker feel at the end. And I think it actually, it fits this image, the storming image, maybe better than the blue. And I really liked this one. I think that just the black T by itself, It's amazing. It seems almost too simple, but it does have a really nice effect on the image without overpowering it or changing it completely. And it's one that I would find very easy to go back to. Next we have the TSP and then the black tea. The TSP was acting as a bleach, right? So we're removing color, the image mostly disappears, and then we replace that color with whatever the tannins from the T is going to give it. Again. Here's the test sprint. We won't waste time looking at that too much. But even on that thin print, you can see what's interesting. Is that there's still the details in the background there and here's one where it was in the TSP for about 30 seconds, which was long enough to really bleach out anything that wasn't the darkest shadows. You can see the dark shadows. There's still a little bit blue right there, the trees, but everything else pretty much got bleached out and then it was in the black tea for just about a minute. What's really nice with this? Is this even more so there's a really strong contrast between this faded tarnish brown background and then the shadows of the blue. And again, I think with the right image, this could be a really strong technique. Let's go ahead and look at another. This one used different amounts of time. So it was in the TSP for a full minute, maybe even a little bit more. And the image was completely gone. There was no more blue left. It was just the faint image in yellow. And then I left it in the black tea for five full minutes and the image completely comes back. But it isn't this very narrow tonal range. It's, you know, but all the, technically all the details are in there. So again, this is one of those that with this particular image, I don't know that it works too well, but it has that sort of a beautiful quality in that solid color that could work for the right image. And relatively simple to achieve because the TSP worked so quickly to completely erase that image. Then here's just a different timing of that same method. So the TSP really quick, just ten seconds. And then the black tea for five minutes. You can see there's more of that shadow area with the kind of toned blue and then still that tan. So what I like here is that strong playbook between the blue and the dark areas and the really tan, warm, lighter areas. What I didn't like about this process in some ways was the TSP acted so quickly. So if I were to go back, I would probably cut the amount of TSP and a half or maybe even less and see if that meant that the bleaching process took longer. So I'd have more fine-grained control over when I could pull it out and have exactly the amount of image left in blue that I wanted. That's something where I had to go back to this process again. I would probably make that change. Next we have the violet process which used borax. And really how I would describe this as, borax is a very, very mild detergent and so it's a very mild bleach for cyano types. And so that's essentially what we ended up getting three prints here. Here was thirty-seconds in the borax. And if I didn't tell you this had been toned, you probably wouldn't be able to notice. Even when I put this one up side-by-side, it's a very subtle, subtle change. There is a change when I look at them in person, I can tell a difference. The original cyanotype has a little bit more of that cyan to it that like kind of a brighter blue, whereas this has gone a little bit darker, maybe a tad bit of warmth to it. I can see why it would be called violet. This is one that going in, I knew was very experimental. It tends to be temperamental and the amount of borax you use is in all the instructions that I've read said, use variable amounts to your taste, right. So that just means that depending on the water you have, depending on the print condition, all that stuff, It's going to come out a little bit differently. This one, honestly, it doesn't seem as reliable of a process. Here's another one. I left it in for two minutes and you can see it started to actually slowly bleach. So it did slowly lighten the image. Again. The side-by-side comparison of the color like this is a little bit more saturated looking when compared with this, of course, this one, the one that got bleached, started to fade a little bit. Then here's splitting the difference. Here's a one-minute print, and again, Here's the original untold cyanotype right here. My takeaway on that one is probably not my favorite just because the change in the image is not enough to sort of justify the amount of time and the processing that has to go into it. If I'm gonna be toning, I went to see a noticeable color change. Seemed like the longer we left it in there, it definitely was bleaching more and more, so we weren't going to get any richer or different color out of that. But I am curious of seeing if the borax would change the color of some. If I'm toning with some other materials, I'm going to definitely keep that in my back pocket. It's a very user-friendly chemistry to have. And so I'm probably going to try it with some other things, not just by itself later. Last we have these experimental ones that I did combinations that I've never seen written down anywhere. But, you know, you're using bleach, a toner, and essentially we're going to get something. And so let's look at what this was. This one started in some borax, that very mild bleach and then got put into the black tea for not that long. About a minute, I believe was the time. Again, it definitely changed the sort of blew it. The highlights warmed up. Now, was it that different from this one was just the black tea? Well, you can look and make a judgment for yourself. Looking at them in person, they are slightly different. This one looks like the blue actually got warmed up a little bit more. So I'm guessing that means the blue was bleached out slightly by the borax and so more of that brown kind of replaced it. But they're not all that different in-person. They're in the same family. Next we have one that I put in TSP for ten seconds and then in the black tea for three minutes. So TSP just starting to remove the image and really it was less than ten seconds because I knew I had left it in ten seconds plus before. And so here I left it in a shy ten seconds. And then the black tea went to work. And so this is similar to those other ones, but with more darkness to the shadows which, which I kind of like this. Once again, I would probably go back and lower the strength of that TSP solution to make it a little more friendly to work with. Then last but not least, we have I put it in black tea first for three minutes and then borax for one-minute. See that there? And let me just go back to the original. Here's black tea for one minute. There is some difference and it does look like the borax had some effect on the darker areas to help it change a little bit more, I think, compared with the other, just straight or x. I think I actually prefer this one with the black tea first again, just because there's more of a noticeable change in this final image. Once again, just to show you what we started with, Here's our starting cyanotype. What takeaways do you have? Hopefully, when you're looking at your images, you can have ones that you see are clearly better than others. And you've been taking notes and writing things down that allow you to go and now re-create that. The beautiful thing is, yes, this is somewhat repeatable. You can go back and do it. But at the same time, each one of these is really unique, right? Each one of these objects is going to be slightly different than the other. As precise as you try to be. There's gonna be some nuance to every image you make. And I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that's inherent to the toning process, and I think it's very much a part of the cyanotype process itself that you have these one of a kind images at the end. I think that's great. Thanks so much for joining into this class. I hope these toning processes, while they've been easy, have kind of opened your eyes to some new possibilities for ways that you can finish your images and really bring about your own expression with these images in the way that you want. I'm excited to see the images you make. Please make sure that you make a project and share your images with me with the rest of the class. I'd love to give you feedback, answer any questions you have. Thanks so much for being here. If you'd like to learn more about cyanotype, I have a lot more classes planned and already taught about ten or so on Skillshare, I recommend that you check those out. Really looking forward to still interacting with his community that we have together, learning cyanotype photography together. See you next time.