Thanks for this very interesting outline, Don. I have never used Panalure, but I'm surprised that you would get bad fogging during normal development under safelight, to the point that you need to develop it in full darkness. Is this the case whether you use red or yellow-green safelights?
I experience fogging problems when I process prints using the Lith Printing process, because of the long processing times (8-10 minutes or above), but I've solved that by using a low wattage bulb with my safelight and using the recommended yellow-green safelight for the papers I use. On a different point, allow me to mention a process which I've used in the past that is a distant parent of yours. It goes along the following: 1. Print and process your print the ususal way. 2. Go to the nearest laser copy machine and get a negative image from the copymachine, the size of the final print you want to make. 3. Apply 3-8 coats of Liquitex Acrylic Matte Medium, letting dry between coats and applying each coat cross-wise to the previous one. Fewer coats will give you a more fragile base while many coats will give you a coarser base to work with latter. 4. Soak in warm water and slowly peel the paper from the acrylic base. The (negative) image will stick to the base. The base will look rather milky when dry. 5. Use this negative to make a contact print. If the negative is small enough (e.g. 4x5), you can put it in your favorite 4x5 enlarger and the criss-cross texture of the acrylic base will show much more on your print. If you happen to have an 8x10 enlarger in your darkroom, then all the better. The texture will look as if the print was printed on linen cloth. Cheers, Guy
