Timeline of Historical Colors in Photography and Film

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Autochrome film / Cinécolor

1928
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Auguste and Louis Lumière
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France
Additive 3 color: Mosaic screen
Several attempts were made to apply the Autochrome process invented by the Lumière brothers to motion pictures. Transparent potato starch grains with a diameter of 15–20 micrometer were colored in the additive primaries red, green and blue. The ...

27 Images in 2 Galleries

Autotype Dyebro

ca. 1929
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Owen Wheeler, Autotype Company
Subtractive 3 color: dye imbibition process, still photography
“Autotype Dyebro Introduced around the same time as Colorsnap and Uvatype, Autotype Dyebro combined the three-color carbro and dye imbibition processes. The method was invented by Owen Wheeler (1859–1932) and commercialized by the Autotype ...

Autotype Trichrome Carbro

1921
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H. F. Farmer, Autotype Company
Subtractive 3 color: pigment process, still photography
“As in previous versions of the process, pigment papers were soaked in a sensitizing bath and then squeegeed firmly onto the surface of wet bromide prints to harden the pigmented gelatin in proportion to the amount of silver contained in the ...

1 Image

Autotype Wet Carbon

1944
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Autotype Company
Subtractive 3 color: pigment process, still photography
“Introduced by the Autotype Company in 1944, the Autotype Wet Carbon Process was a variant of the traditional carbon process with novelty wet-printing pigment papers. Considerable time was saved when printing with this material as the pigment ...

Bassani

1910
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(Société Chromofilm)
Additive 3 color: Successive exposure, 72 fps
“Camera.—An interesting camera has been made by the Société Chromofilm, Paris. An astonishing mechanism moves the entire gate, and film within it, at each exposure, with reference to the normal fixed objective. Three miniature negatives are ...

3 Images in 1 Gallery

Belcolor

ca. 1935
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George Murphy
Subtractive 3 color: pigment process, still photography
“Introduced in the mid-1930s by George Murphy, Inc., of New York City, Belcolor was considered one of the simplest ways to obtain color transparencies, as it required no special equipment or expert technique and could be used successfully ...

Berthon

1908
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Rodolphe Berthon
Additive 3 color: Lenticular screen
“R. Berthon patented the use of a lens diaphragm with three apertures, covered respectively with red, green and blue-violet filters, and a sensitive surface on a support, the other side of which was impressed with hemi-spherical, transparent, ...

4 Images

Berthon-Siemens / Siemens-Berthon / Siemens-Perutz-Verfahren / Opticolor

1936
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Rodolphe Berthon (Siemens &. Halske AG)
Additive 3 color: Lenticular screen

5 Images

Bi-pack

1901
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Adolf A. Gurtner
Subtractive 2 color: bi-pack, still photography
“A. Gurtner (Eng. P. 7924/03; U.S.P. 730454), used a front element that was sensitive only to the blue, and a rear element that was sensitive up to but not including the red. He was the first person to suggest that the two films or plates be ...

1 Image

Biochrom

1914
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S. Prokudin-Gorsky und S. Maximovitch
Additive 3 color: Double-sized film, rotary filter

Biocolour

1911
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William Friese-Greene and Colin Bennett; Claude Friese-Greene
Additive 2 color: Alternately stained images
“Inevitably, the success of Kinemacolor led to the appearance of imitations. One company, Friese Greene Patents Ltd had been formed in 1908 to exploit several patents, mostly impractical, filed by Friese Greene. From this came a new company, ...

39 Images in 3 Galleries

Bocca-Rudatis

1933
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Carlo Bocca, Domenico Rudatis, (Luigi Amati)
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Italy
Additive 3 color: lenticular screen
The procedure for obtaining the lenticular elements in relief required a series of steps: starting from three black and white positive color separations, obtained with any of the available methods, three matrices were printed, from which the film to ...

1 Image

Brewster

1915
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Percy Douglas Brewster
Subtractive 2 color: Perforated mirror as beam-splitter, duplitized film
“Following the premises of one of William Friese-Greene’s systems, this two-colour subtractive process required that two reels of film be printed in parallel through a lens fitted with a prism that split light in two directions, through red ...

Brewster

1930
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Percy Douglas Brewster (Brewster Color Film Corp)
Subtractive 2 or 3 color: Perforated mirror as beam-splitter, duplitized film
“The Brewster Process. (U.S.P. 1,752,477. 1930-) Camera. – P. D. Brewster, an American inventor, who was one of the first to apply the bipack system to colour cinematography, has a number of patents to his credit covering various cameras and ...

52 Images in 1 Gallery

British Tricolour / Dufaychrome

1946
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Jack Coote (Dufay-Chromex Ltd.)
Subtractive 3 color: Beam-splitter, three-strip, multiple printing

19 Images in 3 Galleries

Busch Farbenfilm

1926
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Emil Busch (Busch, Rathenow)
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Germany
Additive 2 color: Beam-splitter, red-green

5 Images in 1 Gallery

Caille

1907
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Edmond-Charles-Guislain Caille
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France
Additive three-color: line screen, still photography
Process for still photography in which light is filtered through a screen or transparent plate covered in lines or dots in the primary colors orange, green and violet. For the positive, the process relies on a support material which includes an ...

Carbro-Chromatone

1937
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Harlan L. Baumbach
Subtractive 3 color: pigment process, still photography
“References to Carbro-Chromatone prints are sometimes found in the literature on early color photography. These prints were made using a combination of the two processes they were named after. The method was described by Harlan L. Baumbach in ...

Chemicolor / Ufacolor in GB

1932
Subtractive 2 color: Bi-pack, mordant toning
“Chemicoior was the name under which the German Ufacolor Process was marketed in Britain. Ufacolor was also marketed under the name Spectracolor. The process used Agfa bipack negatives loaded with the emulsion sides facing and separated by a ...

9 Images in 2 Galleries

Chimicolor

1931
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R. Valette (Syndicat de la Cinématographie des Couleurs)
Subtractive 3 color: Beam-splitter, double-coated film, mordant toning

2 Images

Chromal Paper

1914
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Rudolf Fischer, Hans Siegrist, N.P.G.
Subtractive 3 color: dye coupling or chromogenic process, still photography
“In 1912, two chemists at N.P.G. in Berlin, Rudolf Fischer (1881-1957) and Hans Siegrist (1885-1959), introduced the notion of color couplers and patented the application of Homolkas discovery. Their patent described the structure and chemistry ...

Chromart Simplex

1950
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Hans von Fraunhofer (Anglo-American Colour Photographic Industries)
Subtractive 2 color: Chromogenic monopack

Chromart Tricolor

1950
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Hans von Fraunhofer (Anglo-American Colour Photographic Industries)
Subtractive 3 color: Chromogenic monopack

Chromatone

1935
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Francis H. Snyder, Henry W. Rimbach, Defender Photo Supply Company
Subtractive 3 color: silver toning, still photography
“Chromatone was the first commercially viable process of color print making entirely based on silver toning. It was developed in the early 1930s by the New Yorkers Francis H. Snyder and Henry W. Rimbach, who patented the toning methods and ...

2 Images

Chromo-Film

1923
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Adolf Hnatek (Chromo-Film Ges. mbH)
Additive 3 color: Double-sized film, rotary filter

Chromogenic development

1895
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Raphael E. Liesegang
Subtractive 3 color: Chromogenic development

Chromogenic film stock

1911
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Rudolf Fischer and Hans Siegrist (Neue Photographische Gesellschaft)
Subtractive 3 color: Chromogenic monopack

Chromolithography

1898
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(Technique adapted from print media and laterna magica)
Applied colors: printing
Widely used in print media around 1900, the chromolithographic printing process was first adapted for the Laterna Magica and then utilized to produce early animated films primarily aimed at children. These films were usually very short ...

119 Images in 3 Galleries

Cibachrome 1963, after 1991 renamed Ilfochrome

1963
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Ciba
Subtractive 3 color: dye destruction process, silver dye-bleach, still photography
“The materials and processes described thus far have been either unsuccessful or short-lived for one reason or another; the trend changed with the launch of Cibachrome in the 1960s. The product and its subsequent forms dominated the silver ...

1 Image

Cinechrome

1914
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Colin Benett (Cinechrome Ltd.)
Additive 2 color: Prism, rotary filter, double-sized film
“[…] pictures were taken side by side, full-size, on double-width film, the film not only being perforated on the edges but also down the centre between the pairs of images.” (Klein, Adrian Bernhard = Cornwell-Clyne (1940): Colour ...

3 Images