While taking a digital printing class taught by Brad Hinkel in early 2003, I chanced upon Dan Burkholder's web site and saw that he was combining digital color from the Epson 2200 printer with platinum printing. Brad said he had already tried such printing using an earlier version of Epson inks and had dropped it since the platinum clearing baths stripped the ink from the paper. But, given Burkholder's apparent success, and since I already owned an Epson 2200, I decided to give it another try. The first results were crude, but basically the technique worked. So began a period where I would blunder about and try some things, then discuss the results with Brad who usually came up with a technical solution for each problem I encountered. Fortuitously, Brad took a platinum printing workshop with Dick Arentz while this was going on and learned about using disodium chloroplatinate for contrast control, and that was incorporated into the method as well. Eventually Brad and I wrote an article on the process which appeared in the July/August 2003 issue of View Camera Magazine. The method continues to evolve, especially as I learn more about making and using correction curves. This manual describes how I currently apply the procedure.

For brevity I will call the method "Pig/Plat". Not the most euphonious appellation (as W.C. Fields might say) but short and to the point.

The instructions and screen shots in this manual apply to Macintosh OS X. The same controls are available in Windows but they may look different and be found in different places.

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