-
![]()
Russian Ideas in Clothes! (USA 1922). Credit: UCLA Film & Television Archive. Photographs of the nitrate print by Barbara Flueckiger.
Select Category▼×
- All Categories
- Bibliography
- Chromogenic monopack
- Chromolytic multilayer
- Chromolytic single layer
- Color separation
- Double-coated / bi-pack
- Edge Codes and Identification
- Hand coloring
- Instant dye diffusion
- Other
- Printing / Dye-transfer / Pigment
- Screen processes
- Spatial synthesis (multiple lenses, beam splitter)
- Stencil coloring (pochoir, Pathécolor)
- Temporal synthesis (rotary filters)
- Theory
- Tinting
- Toning
“The principle of the subtractive colour process was described first by Louis Ducos du Hauron in 1868.
Although eminently suitable for colour motion pictures, the principle could not be applied until means were found of producing several colour ...
-
![]()
Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press, p. 67.
1 Image
“In 1929 the London firm Colour Snapshots Limited introduced Colorsnap, a printing service based on the dye imbibition process for a tripack roll film called Colorsnap and manufactured by Ilford Ltd. (Monopolies Commission 1966).11 The tripack ...
-
![]()
Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 137.
1 Image
“Around 1940, Condax-Speck, Inc., of New York started to market dyes and mordant for the Condax-Dytrol system of dye imbibition printing (Fig. 4.19). The system, developed by company owners Louis M. Condax (1897–1971) and Robert P. Speck, ...
-
![]()
Credit: Illustration by Sarah Steinbacher, Multimedia & E-Learning-Services, University of Zurich. Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press.
- Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press.
2 Images
“In the 1940s a product called Crawford Flexichrome appeared on the market. It allowed photographers to obtain prints or transparencies in full color by simply applying dyes of various colors by hand to a gelatin relief image.16 Results ...
-
![]()
Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 145.
1 Image
“In 1939 Thomas S. Curtis of Huntington Park, California, introduced Curtis Neotone, a simple dye mordanting printing method for the production of color prints or transparencies from color separation negatives. With Curtis’s method, a ...
“In 1939 Thomas S. Curtis (1889–1964) proposed Orthotone, a dye imbibition printing method that was primarily a variation of the widely used Eastman Wash-Off Relief. Orthotone offered its practitioners complete control on the contrast or ...
-
![]()
Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 142.
1 Image
-
![]()
Credit: Brian Pritchard.
1 Image
“In 1942 Defender Photo Supply Company of Rochester, New York, introduced a panchromatic matrix film called Pan-Chroma-Relief Film, which simplified the making of dye imbibition prints from original Kodachrome or Ansco Color transparencies.20 ...
The film is recorded through alternating red and green filters, creating two color separations. After development, the print is placed in two alternating dye-baths, toning the blacks green and the whites red. Additionally, a black-and-white copy is ...
“This two-color additive system for color cinematography was invented in 1916 by Leon Forrest Douglass of San Rafael, California. A special beam splitter camera would advance each roll of film two frames per exposure with its double frame pull down ...
-
![]()
Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press. Credit: Illustration by Sarah Steinbacher, Multimedia & E-Learning-Services, University of Zurich.
- Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press.
- Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press. Credit: Illustration by Sarah Steinbacher, Multimedia & E-Learning-Services, University of Zurich.
3 Images
“Douglass Color No. 2 (1919). The two negatives of the Douglass Color system No. 1 were printed on a positive. In this updated version of the process, rather than projecting the frames through red and green filters, both latent images were ...
“In 1907 the French lawyer Louis Dufay (1874-1936) patented a system whose screen pattern was obtained by the combined use of dichromated colloids, greasy printing inks, and imbibition.16 To take a photograph, the screen was mounted in a ...
-
![]()
Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 32.
1 Image
(see detail page on Dufaycolor)
-
![]()
Coote, Jack H. (1993): The Illustrated History of Colour Photography. Surbiton, Surrey: Fountain Press,
- Credit: Cinémathèque française, conservatoire des techniques, Paris.
- Source: Ede, François (1994): Jour de fête ou la couleur retrouvée. Cahiers du Cinéma: Paris.
- Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 71.
- Source: Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 73.
- Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 31.
- Source: Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 48.
- Source: Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 69.
8 Images
“In 1907 the French lawyer Louis Dufay (1874-1936) patented a system whose screen pattern was obtained by the combined use of dichromated colloids, greasy printing inks, and imbibition.16 To take a photograph, the screen was mounted in a ...
-
![]()
Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 33.
1 Image
Dufaycolor was a regular line screen process whereby the incident light was filtered through a pattern of tiny color patches created by lines in red, green and blue, the so called réseau.
-
![]()
Reversal Colour Positive. Credit: Courtesy of BFI National Archive. Photograph by Barbara Flueckiger. Film: A Colour Box (GB 1935, Len Lye).
- Microscopic image of the filter structure of a Dufaycolor film. The Emulsion has been removed. The visible structures are not silver grain but the structure of the filter layers. Credit: David Pfluger, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors. Imaging was performed with support of the Center for Microscopy and Image Analysis, University of Zurich.
- Microscopic images of Dufaycolor film with the focus set at different points within the emulsion and filter layers. The images have been chained to show a travelling through the 3-dimensional structure of the layers. Credit: David Pfluger, conversion to video by Martin Weiss, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors. Imaging was performed with support of the Center for Microscopy and Image Analysis, University of Zurich.
231 Images in 9 Galleries
“Dufaytissue materials, marketed by Dufay-Chromex Limited of London between 1941 and 1948, resembled Belcolor and were used to produce color prints by contact. After they had been sensitized and dried, the pigment films were exposed by contact ...
-
![]()
Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 89.
1 Image
-
![]()
Source: Cornwell-Clyne, Adrian (1951): Colour Cinematography. London: Chapman & Hall.
1 Image
“Paget plates were discontinued in the early 1920s. Apparently production costs had risen to an almost prohibitive amount after World War I due to the difficulties of producing screen plates without defect (Offer 1926).
The product reemerged ...
-
![]()
Credit: Illustration by Sarah Steinbacher, Multimedia & E-Learning-Services, University of Zurich. Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press.
- Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press.
- Source: Sease, V. B. (1949): DuPont's New Color Film. In:American Cinematographer, 30: 240, 257-258.
- Credit: Illustration by Sarah Steinbacher, Multimedia & E-Learning-Services, University of Zurich. Source: Sease, V. B. (1949): DuPont's New Color Film. In:American Cinematographer, 30: 240, 257-258.
8 Images in 1 Gallery
-
![]()
Credit: Illustration by Sarah Steinbacher, Multimedia & E-Learning-Services, University of Zurich. Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press.
- Source: Ryan, Roderick T. (1977): A History of Motion Picture Color Technology. London: Focal Press.
2 Images
“Duxochrome, introduced around 1930 by the Johannes Herzog Company of Bremen, Germany, combined the colored gelatin layers of pigment processes with the tanning development procedure of dye imbibition. Exposures from three separation negatives ...
-
![]()
Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 106.
1 Image
“One of the most elegant solutions to the problem of forming a colored image, lies in the utilization of the products formed by the action of the developer upon the latent image. By this means there is formed a dye image whose intensity follows ...
-
![]()
Source: Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson, p. 161.
1 Image
-
![]()
Pénichon, Sylvie (2013): Twentieth Century Colour Photographs. The Complete Guide to Processes, Identification & Preservation. London, Los Angeles: Thames & Hudson.
1 Image
“The Eastman Colour Films are multilayer films of the type in which the layers are not separated after exposure. Films of this class are known as Multilayer, Monopack or Integral Tripack. “Multilayer” is descriptive not only of this ...
-
![]()
Alien (USA 1979, Ridley Scott). Credit: Library of Congress. Photographs of the Eastman Color Print Film from 1979 by Joëlle Kost, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors.
- Photomicrograph of modern chromogenic stock, . Credit: Silvana Konermann.
- Eastman Color chromogenic monopack. Source: Craig, G.J. (1953): Eastman Colour Films for Professional Motion Picture Work. In: British Kinematography, 22,5, 1953, pp. 146-158.
- Color fading of Eastmancolor stock. Credit: Collection Gert Koshofer, Bergisch Gladbach (Germany). Source: Schultze, Werner (1953): Farbenphotographie und Farbenfilm. Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen und technische Gestaltung. Berlin: Springer.
- Color reconstruction by Rudolf Gschwind, University of Basel. Credit: Collection Gert Koshofer, Bergisch Gladbach (Germany).
- Color fading of Eastmancolor stock.
- Source: Schultze, Werner (1953): Farbenphotographie und Farbenfilm. Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen und technische Gestaltung. Berlin/Göttingen /Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. Photograph by Martin Weiss, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors.
- Source: Schultze, Werner (1953): Farbenphotographie und Farbenfilm. Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen und technische Gestaltung. Berlin/Göttingen /Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. Photograph by Martin Weiss, ERC Advanced Grant FilmColors.
707 Images in 23 Galleries
-
![]()
Cross section scheme of Eastman Color Type 5248. Scource: Hanson, W. T., Jr.; Kisner, W. I. (1953): Improved Color Films for Color Motion-Picture Production. In: Journal SMPTE, Vol. 61, Dec. 1953, p. 699.
1 Image
-
![]()
Cross section scheme of Eastman Color Negative, Type 5250. Scource: Dundon, Merle L./Zwick, Daan M. (1959): A High Speed Color Negative Film. In: JSMPTE Vol 68, p. 736.
1 Image
Not to be confused with the Eastman Color Print Film 5381 / 7381 from 1970.
Not to be confused with the Eastman Color Print Film 5381 from 1950.
-
![]()
cross section scheme of Ektachrome Type 5257 (and 5258). Scource: Groet, N.H./Murray, T.J./Osborne, C.E. (1960): Two High-Speed Color Films and a Reversal Print Film for Motion Picture Use. In: JSMPTE Vol. 69, p. 816.
1 Image
-
![]()
Recording of a color video signal onto lenticular film.
- Playback of the color image on the lenticular film as a television signal.
2 Images
Timeline of Historical Film Colors by Barbara Flueckiger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Quote as Flueckiger, Barbara (2012 ff.): Timeline of Historical Film Colors. (= https://filmcolors.org/).
Download BibTex