Black and white printing paper's palette of gray. Cold: silver chloride contact black and white print Making a black and white print is like painting with one color: gray metallic silver. This turns out to be a challenge rather than a limitation, for black and white printing black and white papers are made in such variety that shades of gray become an inexhaustible spectrum. The black and white paper base can be manufactured in numerous textures, tones and surface finishes. And the emulsion coating can make silver images look warm or cool, sharply contrasted or softly modulated. Even color variation is actually possible, since all gray is not simply gray, as the black and white pictures shown here demonstrate. The appearance of the silver may be neutral black, blue-black, warm black, brownish, even reddish. These variations in tone reflect the size and structure of the developed silver grains. The coldest tones are generally produced by an emulsion composed almost entirely of either silver chloride or silver bromide. The interior of Wells Cathedral by Dmitri Kessel was black and white printed on silver chloride black and white paper. If silver bromide is added, the tones become warmer, and can even acquire brown or reddish tinges. Emulsions in which silver chloride predominates are not very sensitive and are mainly used for contact black and white printing. To register the dimmer image projected by an enlarger, the emulsion generally needs the more sensitive silver bromide. The enlargement of Wells Cathedral by Dmitri Kessel has a warm tone because the crystals in the emulsion included some silver bromide. With mainly silver bromide black and white paper, though, the tone again becomes black. Warm darkroom print: sliver chloride-bromide contact black and white print.