> Does this mean that so-called blocked up highlights can only be "tamed" by printing on VC paper, or is there some sort of compensating effect of Pyro development, in addition to the stain?(posted 8658 days ago)The stain causes the compensating effect on VC paper.
When a pyro neg is printed on graded paper or used for alternate printing methods (platinum etc) the stain is simply printing density. This can be of great benefit for alt methods because sometimes the film's silver image simply can't be developed to such a high contrast and D-Max, the grain would be huge or the curve shape would be weird.
When a pyro neg is printed on VC paper the greenish-yellow stain acts as a proportional low-contrast filter which gives the compensating effect.
Pyro doesn't provide compensating development by itself.
A couple of other things...
There are several pyro formulas that are non-staining; you could even make PMK non-staining by using acid stop, acid fix and not giving the alkaline rinse (used developer or Kodalk).
Barry Thornton's DiXactol is also a staining developer, but since the stain is brownish it doesn't give the highlight compression when negs are printed on VC paper.
Pyro negs aren't exactly fine-grained and sharp; it's somewhat more like chunky grain and mediocre acutance, but of course the larger the format the less concern there is over those characteristics. It might be horrible in 35mm and fine in 8x10.