When you selectively bleach areas on a print, do you have to refix and wash or can you just wash the bleach off under running water and dry? Seems like a lot of trouble if you have to fix and wash for the full cycle all over again. Thanks.

-- Don Sparks (Harleyman7@aol.com), November 23, 1999

Answers

If you want your print to last, yes you do need to refix and rewash.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), November 23, 1999.

All a bleach does is oxidising the silver so it becomes a latent image again. So a bleached print is actually like an undeveloped one. To make it permanent, you have to fix it. An exception to this is Farmer's reducer which is in fact a mixture of ferri (bleach) and hypo (fixing agent). If you bleach with Farmer's reducer, you only need to wash.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), November 24, 1999.