Keller-Dorian

Additive 3 color: Lenticular screen

14 Images in 2 Galleries

Technicolor No. II

Subtractive 2 color: 2 toned films cemented

The first subtractive 2 color process introduced by Technicolor captured the incoming light through a beam splitter with red and green filters also. However, in contrast to the first Technicolor process, the two b/w images were recorded on one negative strip. This was achieved by the pull-down of two frames simultaneously, a process that required the double speed in the camera. These two frames were arranged in pairs, whereby the green record was inverted up-side down (see image).

133 Images in 8 Galleries

Traube / Uvachrome

Subtractive 3 color: Mordanting, dye transfer, wash-off relief, still photography
“In the imbibition process, a dye image is transferred from a gelatin relief image to a receiving layer made either of paper or film. Charles Cros described this method of ‘hydrotypie’ transfer printing in 1880 and suggested it ...

3 Images

Gorsky Process

Autotype Trichrome Carbro

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

Zoechrome

Subtractive 3 color: Multi-layer printing

16 Images in 1 Gallery

Prizma II

Subtractive 2 color: Toning on double coated film
“In its final form Prizma made use of duplitized positive film. As in previous Prizma systems, the original negatives were alternate frame sequential exposures. The Prizma negative was printed on both sides of the positive film in a special ...

399 Images in 14 Galleries

Douglass Color No. 2

Subtractive 2 color: Separations, multi-layer prints
“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 ...

Cinekrome

Additive 2 color: Beam-splitter

Gilmore Color

Additive 2 color: Rotary filter
“Gilmore’s two-color additive process was based on a patent granted to F. E. Ives in 1918. A unique optical system exposed two images in pairs, and quarter-turned them lengthwise side by side on standard 35 mm film stock. One of the images was ...

1 Image

Kesdacolor

Subtractive 2 color: Line screen filter, duplitized film stock
”The process as illustrated in USP 1431309 was a two-color additive process, but it is stated that it could be a three- or four-color process. For the original photography, the negative was exposed through a line screen composed of alternate bands ...

1 Image

Polychromide

Subtractive 2 color: Beam-splitter, later bi-pack, mordant dye
“Polychromide, a two-color subtractive process invented in 1918 by Aron Hamburger, achieved limited commercial success overseas, and was occasionally employed in England as late as 1933. Originally an orthochromatic and a panchromatic negative were ...

66 Images in 2 Galleries

Talkicolor

Additive 2 color: Alternately stained
“Two-colour additive process Talkicolor was developed by Percy James Pearce along with Dr Anthony Bernardi who was also involved in the development of Raycol. The process was funded mainly by the author Elinor Glyn through her company Elinor ...

3 Images in 1 Gallery

Panchromotion

Additive 4 color: Rotary filter
”Kelley’s first color process was a four-color additive system introduced in 1913. Called Panchromotion, Kelley formed a company which would exploit the process commercially and, he hoped, provide strong competition for Kinemacolor. He apparently ...

2 Images

Versicolor-Dufay

Additive 3 color: Line screen plate, still photography
“The most successful of all the screen processes was the one initiated by Louis Dufay. Today the product is known as Dufaycolor, but it was first introduced about 1910 as the Dioptichrome plate. The first Dufay patents were assigned to an ...

Technicolor No. I

Additive 2 color: Beam-splitter

During the capturing of the film a beam-splitter in combination with filters in the camera divided the incoming light into a red and a green separation negative on black-and-white stock. When projected in the cinema the two images were combined simultaneously by additive mixture through corresponding red and green filters into one picture consisting of red and green colored light. The reduction of the whole color range to two colors (and their additive combinations) was necessary because of the complex optical arrangement.

6 Images in 1 Gallery

Prizma I

Additive 3 color: Rotary filter
“The color experiments were conducted in the basement of a house at 1586 E. Seventeenth St., Brooklyn, N. Y. During this time a double-coated stock and a bleach formula which had much to do with the success of the later Prizma process were ...

Urban-Joy Process, improvement of Kinemacolor, later called Kinekrom

Additive 2 color: Rotary filter
“In the design of apparatus Urban was assisted after 1905 by Henry W. Joy. The Urban-Joy perforator appeared in 1906. The Urban-Joy anti-firing device, a shutter to prevent the firing of inflammable film when projectors broke down, was another ...

Agfacolor Screen Plate

Additive 3 color: Mosaic screen, still photography
“During the war, an important new screen plate appeared, based on patents taken out by J. H. Christensen in 1908. He proposed to make a concentrated solution of gum in alcohol. Divided into three parts, the gum solutions were dyed red, green ...

11 Images

Handschiegl / DeMille-Wyckoff / Wyckoff Process

Applied color: Imbibition
Similar to stenciling, the Handschiegl process was applied mechanically to manually defined image parts. Therefore it is an applied color process. After the film was shot and edited, for each color applied a separate print was made. In contrast to ...

141 Images in 8 Galleries

Douglass Color No. 1

Additive 2 color: Rotary filter
“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 ...

3 Images

Hicrography / Hicrome

Subtractive 3 color: dye imbibition process, still photography
“In 1915 the company launched a hybrid dye imbibition color printing system called Hicrography.9 From the separation negatives, positive impressions were made through the base on the presensitized dichromated film (Hicro Film), which also ...

1 Image

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 ...

Kodachrome Two-color 1915, after 1930 renamed Fox Nature Color

Subtractive 2 color process: Beam-splitter, double-coated film

The Kodachrome process was invented in 1913 by John G. Capstaff for still photography and subsequently adapted to motion pictures. For the process two frames were advanced simultaneously, one located above the other. The light passed either through two lenses or through a beam-splitter, fitted with red and green filters. The release print was exposed through a beam-splitter whereby the alternate frames were projected onto either side of double-coated stock. After development by a usual b/w process, the film was tanned to harden the exposed areas. The soft areas were dyed red-orange and blue-green respectively.

350 Images in 12 Galleries

Chromal Paper

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 ...

Biochrom

Additive 3 color: Double-sized film, rotary filter

Cinechrome

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

Colcin

Additive 2 color: Simultaneous 1 strip
“The first two-colour additive method in which the two components were taken and projected simultaneously was the Colcin process, in 1913. The result of a Franco-Japanese collaboration, it was demonstrated at the International Kinematographic ...

1 Image

Donisthorpe

Additive two color process: rotating filters and toning
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 ...

Procédé Tetrachrome

Additive four-color process: rotating filters
Based on four primary colors, the process successively recorded two simultaneous images for two primary colors each. In projection, the four images were combined on screen, supposedly via a regular projector.

Colorgraph / Cinecolorgraph

Subtractive 2 color: Beam-splitter, double-coated film
“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 ...

1 Image

Gaumont Chronochrome

Additive 3 color: Sawn-off lenses and filters, simultaneous taking and projection
“The competition between Kinemacolor and other rival systems was partially stimulated by a Utopian faith in the potential of film technology to achieve ‘natural colour’, reality ‘as it is’ being the goal of the cinematic ...

12 Images in 2 Galleries

Audibert

Additive 3 color: Prism
“R. Berthon and M. Audibert patented a method of obtaining a virtual image by means of an anterior lens and prisms or mirrors. This idea was further improved upon in E.P. 17,023, 1913. In F.P. 458,040 Audibert proposed to use a negative front lens ...

2 Images

Chromogenic film stock

Subtractive 3 color: Chromogenic monopack

Biocolour

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

Bassani

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

Dufay / Dioptichrome-B

Additive 3 color: regular mosaic screen, combined system, still photography
“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 ...

1 Image

Dufay / Dioptichrome

Additive 3 color: regular mosaic screen, separate system, still photography
“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 ...

1 Image

Mordant toning / dye toning

Applied colors: Silver replacement by mordanting
Mordant toning or dye toning is a special case of toning whereby the silver image is replaced by colored compounds. Soluble dyes attach to a colorless (silver ferrocyanide) or nearly colorless (silver iodide) silver salt obtained by bleaching. Dye ...

171 Images in 7 Galleries

Kinemacolor

Additive 2 color: Rotary filter

Kinemacolor was an additive process operated with alternating red and green filters that were applied to the shutter in front of the camera and in front of the projector. With at least 32 fps the frame rate was double the minimal frame rate of 16 fps. Time parallax with small differences between the red and green record resulted in color fringes that became visible when objects or scenes were moving.

13 Images in 3 Galleries

Dufay / Dioptichrome Plate (sometimes incorrectly referenced as Dioptochrome)

Additive 2-4 color: Line screen plate (réseau), still photography and early experiments with film
(see detail page on Dufaycolor)

10 Images

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

Ulysse

Two, three or four color color additive process: multiple lenses
The process relied on two-, three- or even four-color selections being superimposed on the screen. On the positive, two, three or four images of reduced dimensions were printed on a single frame with a longitudinal and lateral distance corresponding ...

Procédé Colombier

Subtractive 3 color: Tri-pack
“M. F. de Colombier appears to have been the first to suggest the application of this system to cinematography, and like so many French patents it is a little indefinite in phraseology. Three films were employed representing the same view and ...

Caille

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 ...

Dye coupling

Subtractive 3 color: Chromogenic monopack
“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 ...

1 Image

Autochrome

Additive 3 color: Mosaic screen, still photography
“The Autochrome process was the first fully practical single-plate colour process to reach the photographic public. It was easy to use. The plate was loaded into a conventional holder, glass to the front. The exposure was made through a yellow ...

16 Images

Traube / Diachromie

Subtractive 3 color: Mordant toning, still photography
“In the imbibition process, a dye image is transferred from a gelatin relief image to a receiving layer made either of paper or film. Charles Cros described this method of “hydrotypie” transfer printing in 1880 and suggested it ...

Predecessor of Kinemacolor

Additive 2 color: Rotary filter
“Then we come upon the name of George Albert Smith, F.R.A.S., of Laboratory Lodge, Roman Crescent, Southwick, Brighton, who in E.P. 26,671, of 1906, patented the method which eventually was commercialized as Kinemacolor. In this patent he ...

Tinting by application of varnish

Applied colors: Tinting
Very little information is available on this very rare process. Instead of immersion into a dye-bath the positive print was coated uniformly with a varnish. This technique can be identified by the lack on dyes in the perforation area and by the ...

1 Image