Developer (photography)

In the processing of photographic films, plates or papers, the photographic developer (or just developer) is one or more chemicals that convert the latent image to a visible image. Developing agents achieve this conversion by reducing the silver halides, which are pale-colored, into silver metal, which is black (when a fine particle). The conversion occurs within the gelatine matrix. The special feature of photography is that the developer only acts on those particles of silver halides that have been exposed to light. Generally, the longer a developer is allowed to work, the darker the image.

For black-and-white photography, the developer typically consists of a mixture of chemical compounds prepared as an aqueous solution. Three main components of this mixture are:^:115

Notable standard formulas include Eastman Kodak D-76 film developer, D-72 print developer, and D-96 motion picture negative developer.

Hydroquinone is superadditive with metol, meaning that it acts to "recharge" the metol after it has been oxidised in the process of reducing silver in the emulsion. Sulfite in a developer not only acts to prevent aerial oxidation of the developing agents in solution, it also facilitates the regeneration of metol by hydroquinone (reducing compensation and adjacency effects) and in high enough concentrations acts as a silver halide solvent. The original lithographic developer contained formaldehyde (often added as paraformaldehyde powder) in a low sulfite/bisulfite solution.

Most developers also contain small amounts of potassium bromide to modify and restrain the action of the developer^:218-219 to suppress chemical fogging. Developers for high contrast work have higher concentrations of hydroquinone and lower concentrations of metol and tend to use strong alkalis such as sodium hydroxide to push the pH up to around pH 11 to 12.

Metol is difficult to dissolve in solutions of high salt content and instructions for mixing developer formulae therefore almost always list metol first. It is important to dissolve chemicals in the order in which they are listed. Some photographers add a pinch of sodium sulfite before dissolving the metol to prevent oxidation, but large amounts of sulfite in solution will make it very slow for metol to dissolve.

Because metol is relatively toxic and can cause skin sensitisation, modern commercial developers often use phenidone or dimezone S (4-hydroxymethyl-4-methyl-1-phenyl-3-pyrazolidone) instead. Hydroquinone can also be toxic to the human operator as well as environment; some modern developers replace it with ascorbic acid, or vitamin C. This, however, suffers from poor stability. Ascorbate developers may have the advantage of being compensating and sharpness-enhancing, as oxidation by-products formed during development are acidic, meaning they retard development in and adjacent to areas of high activity. This also explains why ascorbate developers have poor keeping properties, as oxidised ascorbate is both ineffective as a developing agent and lowers the pH of the solution, making the remaining developing agents less active. Recently, claims for practical methods to improve the stability of ascorbate developers have been made by several experimenters.

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