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it's complicated and I am about to give away my age. When I started doing darkroom work (late 1960s), B&W papers were available from Kodak, GAF, Agfa, Ilford, and Dupont. For essentially pure black on a pure white base there were Kodak Kodabromide, Agfa Brovira, Ilford Ilfabrom (perhaps a drop warm?), and GAF and Dupont papers whose names escape me. So-called "warm-tone" papers, i.e. black with a hint of brown, included Kodak Medalist, Agfa Portriga Rapid, GAF Cykora, etc. These were on essentially white bases with a touch of warmth (very faintly cream). Some folks complained that Portriga Rapid had a greenish tinge but that depended on the developer, temperature, and illumination. That never was a problem for me and prints on Portriga had a sense of "depth" that no Kodak paper could rival. There definitely were papers that had distinctly cream-colored bases, Kodak Ektalure and Opal for example. Dupont Varigam could print to a truly cold (i.e. blue-leaning) black and Varilour was designed to provide a range of tones from neutral black to distinctly warmer but not quite brown, depending on developer, drying temperature and the optional use of a special developer additive. Papers also came in a very wide range of textures that could also affect the perception of intensity/depth/ density/contrast. An old Kodak chart I have lists 23 different brands of Kodak papers (some only for contact printing or special purposes) and nine possible surfaces, although well under half the total possible combinations were actually available. Then there were the paper developers: for neutral or "cold" tones there were Kodak Dektol, Dupont 54-D, Ilford Ilfobrom, Edwal 111 and formulas one had to mix from raw chemicals, like the pyrogallol developers that Edward Weston loved, Ansco (later GAF) 130, etc. For "warmer" blacks one could buy Kodak Selectol, GAF Ardol (I sent to hazardous waste disposal what was probably the world's last unopened can of it about two years ago), Edwal Platinum and others, or mix in the darkroom Ansco 135, Agfa 120, Ilford ID-78, etc. And then there were toners of all sorts, too long a story to get into here. The take home message is that there was no one standard or ideal black and white print "color" although fashions and times did change what photographers preferred. The f/64 school of photographers (Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, etc.) leaned towards neutral or even cold blacks, although Ansel Adams' earliest prints were distinctly warm tone, as was the commercial style at that time. In college, my yearbook colleagues thought I was really weird for printing on warm-tone papers and experimenting with sepia toners to get a wide range of brown tones as the Ansel Adams style was THE style at that time and Ansel's style was to print on neutral or slightly cold-tone papers with pure white bases (Kodabromide, Brovira) and then tone them with selenium toner. On these papers, which were mostly silver bromide, the selenium toner would eliminate any last hint of warmth and increase the density (deeper black, less gray, which Kodabromide certainly needed when the price of silver skyrocketed) of the print; if carried to excess this toner could give a hint of purple to these papers. The same toner on the warm-tone chlorobromide papers gave a deep brown that was very attractive but very out-of-fashion at that time. Tastes change, and now that we can have our digital blacks with any tint we want we have to decide if we are trying to emulate silver halide prints and if so, those of which photographer at what time. Alternatively, we can choose one "black" as our own style of digital print or we can choose a tone for each image based on what we feel is best for that image. The last is my practice but there is certainly no one right answer. I have to admit that I did have fun figuring out how to emulate the tint and tonal range of long-extinct Dupont Varigam using the Topaz Labs B&W Effects plugin....
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Originally posted by stevebrot 
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