..lith printing was always the one for me, compared to conventional tray printing it seemed more like painting with chemicals. Lith is a much more fluid way of printing, whereas conventional tray printing attains the tones through a process of deduction using test strips and various calculating methods to balance exposure, filter grade and development time, balance is key to both, it is the methods to gaining balance that are different.

lith is an infectious process, the bromide paper is over-exposed under the white light. The shadows are governed by agitation in the developer.. as the paper is agitated the blacks begin to 'come through', but as they do the process speeds up and the blacks begin to show and solidify at a faster and faster rate in relation to the gradation of the various mid-tones. This is the 'infectious process'...

... like other processes of chemical printing tones are forged in the enlargers light where the highlights show white without the blacks being either under developed or too dense, whilst retaining mid-tone (although like all printing this is subjective, I always preferred higher contrast lith, I use selenium toner with lith because of the colour it gives through the reaction with the bromide in the paper. It builds a mid-tone cool grey back into the composition)..
the difference with lith comes from an original over-exposure of the image onto paper under the enlargers white light. The invisible image on the paper at the start of development is really a solid black block, all the mid-tones are effectively over exposed to the point of being black. The mid-tone gradation is created at the point that the printer 'pulls the print' rather than as with other printing processes where the mid-tones are worked out through the process of deduction through exposure test strips. I always thought of it like layers of time being layed down on the paper. The darkest areas in print ironically contain the most light, the lightest areas contain, in print process, no light. It's like a negative/ positive dialectic within itself where pulling the print offers the printer the opportunity for involvement into that discussion between light and time., everyone will see the point to pull differently, it's really down to the eye of the printer at that moment!

Lith chemical is also much more unstable than conventional developer, it is mixed to a weaker concentration so oxidation and depletion through the actual printing process happens more quickly, sometimes to the point where print on print are completely different. You can not really control or predict how the same tray of chemical will work from one print to the next, which is what for me was the magic of its fluidity. It forces you to work in a more spontaneous way, print to print and moment to moment, an emphasis entirely on the process. The dev also contains the magic 'old brown', a previously expired and oxidized lith developer that gives lith prints their grainy newspaper quality. if you lith print you are never going to be short of old brown..,