Stop Bath: The developer is an alkaline and using stop bath which is an acid solution stops the development process immediately.

*Fixer: While the developer has reacted with the areas effected by the light and altered the silver salts to metallic silver, the silver salts that have not been effected by the light remain. A fixing solution is used to remove these silver salts so that there is only the metallic silver and the paper base left. After this the film can finally be handled in daylight as there is no light sensitive salts left.

*Wash: Finally the film is thoroughly washed to remove all traces of the chemicals used in the process.

It is then dried.

The same basic chemical principals are used in the processing of all film, ( colour, black and white, negative and positive) and also to make prints both B&W and colour.

Not only do many photographer swear by different chemicals for processing their film but they also use different methods of developing film. We will have a look at this later.