Platinum palladium printing is one of the oldest photographic processes still in active use, dating back to the 1880s. Prints made this way can last thousands of years, and no two are identical because every coat of chemistry applied by hand is different.
Coming to you from Adrian Vila of aows, this fascinating video follows Vila as he visits Hidden Light, a fine-art printmaking lab now based in Elkhart, Indiana, run by master printer Matt Beaty. The process starts in Lightroom and Photoshop, where images are soft-proofed for platinum and converted to digital negatives, but that's only the beginning. Matt coats sheets of Bergger COT 320 paper by hand with a ferric oxalate and palladium solution, and the brushwork itself becomes part of the print's character. You can look at a platinum print and identify who coated it just by the stroke pattern, which means every print carries a physical signature even before the image appears.
The exposure unit at Hidden Light is one of the largest in the world at 10 feet long and 4 feet wide, running UV black lights for a 5-minute exposure. The contact negative is placed ink-side down against the emulsion, which is how the process achieves sharpness that earlier experimental approaches, including Vila's own Mobile Darkroom project using a Bronica medium format camera as an enlarger, could never quite reach. Development happens fast, with 5 gallons of potassium oxalate developer poured across a custom 48x96 inch tray. The print then moves through two dilute acid baths to pull residual iron out of the paper, preventing long-term oxidation, followed by a 40-to-45-minute wash.
What makes this video worth watching closely is how much of the process is dependent on variables that rarely get discussed, like ambient humidity, the amount of water in the brush, and the exact speed at which developer hits the paper surface. Beaty is candid about all of it, including a coating mistake made during one of the three prints produced that morning. He also explains how he works with clients remotely, reviewing files and suggesting adjustments to black points or removing distracting elements before a single sheet of paper gets coated. Vila's own history with film and analog printing gives the whole visit real context. He spent years trying to solve the sharpness problem with his mobile darkroom setup before finding that Hidden Light had relocated to within an hour of where he spends most of his year. Check out the video above for the full rundown and the complete step-by-step process of turning a digital file into a platinum palladium print.
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