dye transfer info ... mixed bag

https://www.eizo.com/solutions/casestudies/dye_transfer_atelier/

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/eastman-kodak-company-kodak-dye-1953177858

https://theonlinephotographer.typep...and-me-a-meandering-half-century-journey.html

https://landscapephotographyblogger.com/tag/dye-transfer-prints/ re Philip Hyde & Elliot Porter & Sierra Club

There's a lot more online however it doesn't deal fully with the routine, less "artistic" work of portrait photographers that justified Kodak's continued sale of paper, matrices, ink etc until 1994..

All the files and member contacts from the Dye Transfer Forum have been transferred to a new site, but there's an intact link between them. David Doubley is especially good for his archive of older literature and even videos. Bettina uses a hybrid process exposing the matrices with a blue-laser, and they have their own matrix film and transfer paper custom made, but only for their own commercial use. The rest of us are either using old stockpiled Kodak supplies, or else Efke matrix film and hand-mordanted paper like Bettina previously used. I have about 5 yrs of supplies, but not a sufficient block of time yet to get seriously involved with printing. If a wealthy patron came around, or everyone pooled together their resources, it would be entirely feasible to rejuvenate everything necessary. But that kind of thing would really depends on ongoing interest by a younger generation. Ctein worked with a whole different version of the process, printing directly from color negatives using pan matrix film. That could hypothetically be mfg again too; but it always was a much smaller niche category. Most dye printing was made from color transparencies then color separation negatives, or in-camera separations if still life subjects were involved.

DREW WILEY said:

printing directly from color negatives using pan matrix film. That could hypothetically be mfg again too; but it always was a much smaller niche category

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This risks setting fire to a hornets' nest, given the ridiculous wars that were fought on here over it a decade or more ago, but I'm increasingly convinced that Pan-Matrix film was nothing other than a modified Super-XX emulsion, with a carbon pigment added and no/ minimal hardener. If it was, and there may be clues to be unearthed in the Technicolor patents from when they revived the IB prints in the 1990's as to suitable emulsions, then it would probably be within the abilities of a small specialist coating plant like ADOX Marly to make something suitable. If a work-alike rather than a drop-in replacement is the intention, then I think it offers more opportunity to do something interesting.

jtk said:

https://www.eizo.com/solutions/casestudies/dye_transfer_atelier/

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/eastman-kodak-company-kodak-dye-1953177858

https://theonlinephotographer.typep...and-me-a-meandering-half-century-journey.html

https://landscapephotographyblogger.com/tag/dye-transfer-prints/ re Philip Hyde & Elliot Porter & Sierra Club

There's a lot more online however it doesn't deal fully with the routine, less "artistic" work of portrait photographers that justified Kodak's continued sale of paper, matrices, ink etc until 1994..

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Before Kodak Dye Transfer Products were discontinued there was very little use of the products by portrait photographers. There was one portrait photographer who made corporate executive portrait. The primary users were commercial labs one in Germany, one in Japan, and five US commercial labs plus Ctein .

laser said:

Before Kodak Dye Transfer Products were discontinued there was very little use of the products by portrait photographers. There was one portrait photographer who made corporate executive portrait. The primary users were commercial labs one in Germany, one in Japan, and five US commercial labs plus Ctein .

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In that context, it's not massively surprising it went - that's not a big commercial user base.

No Lachlan, you're completely off. Pan Matrix film was basically regular Matrix film with added sensitizer dye to make it pan sensitive. Yes, some carbon was added to, but for another reason. This kind of product needs a much deeper gelatin layer than Super-XX, though Super-XX could be tanned and used for certain other alt techniques. Technicolor made their own DT products. So did Color Corp of America. So did the US military. So did Agfa. Super-XX had an extremely long straight line, so was preferred for color separation negatives. Matrix films were just the opposite and had a terribly long toe, and that's why dye transfer had such a bad time reproducing highlights unless separate highlight masking was done. You're also completely wrong, Mr. Laser; dye transfer printing was the gold standard of color portrait work for several decades and very common with high-end studios. Some of them custom blended their own dyes, just like Technicolor did to match specific movie sets. There were very large labs which did the printing on an assembly-line basis. I met with the former owner of the largest of those labs a couple years ago to try to pry out some secrets. Ctein was kind enough to show me his DT prints of the British Royal Family trust, which demanded DT. The main problem nowadays is that everyone wants everything yesterday; and inkjet is far easier. DT gave much better hue control in my opinion, and dyes have a transparency and life which inks don't. The difference in blacks is stunning. But I certainly don't expect a big commercial revival or either DT still or movies. Even hazmat issues related to industrial quantities of tanning agents limit that possibility. During that era chromogenic 'C' papers didn't have very good permanence. Cibachrome came along and stole some of the thunder from DT, being even more permanent but rather difficult to tame for subtle portrait use (I did a number of portraits with it). Then Kodak became just plain undependable of a supplier. Digital printing gradually kept getting better, and the rest is history. But DT might be around for awhile longer among niche users, and could in fact easily be revived if someone had a sufficient budget for coating matrix film for general distribution. Efke did that about 15 yrs ago.

DREW WILEY said:

No Lachlan, you're completely off. Pan Matrix film was basically regular Matrix film with added sensitizer dye to make it pan sensitive. Yes, some carbon was added to, but for another reason. This kind of product needs a much deeper gelatin layer than Super-XX, though Super-XX could be tanned and used for certain other alt techniques. Technicolor made their own DT products. So did Color Corp of America. So did the US military. So did Agfa.

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First off, 'Laser' aka Bob Shanebrook, definitely will have been more aware of the major users of DT materials in the latter years of the Kodak supporting the process than just about anyone else.

Secondly, I cannot find any references anywhere in the literature to Pan-Matrix having flat highlight reproduction - if you have access to published curves, I'd like to see the ones for 4149. If anything, the talk is of reining in highlights on 4149. It is however noted as being about 3 stops faster than the regular matrix film - which would be a highly unusual consequence of dye sensitisation. I think that regular matrix film's flatter highlights were likely a combination of older, coarser K-grain emulsion type and that one of the side effects of the yellow absorber dye (apart from the depth effect) was to regulate toe contrast behaviour. The black pigment/ dispersion/ dye/ pigment that may have behaved like a dye for manufacturing purposes in Pan-Matrix was for controlling the depth effect as far as I know.

The revived Technicolor of the 1990's seems to have been done in fairly close collaboration with Kodak's MP division & there's quite a few patents from Bogdanowicz et al that leave an interesting trail of breadcrumbs. Not least of which is a comment to the effect that regular Pan-Matrix type films as used in cinema had quite a sharp toe & had to be flashed to control it. There were a number of consequences of this - it was usually a blue light flash, with panchro matrix used for red and green separations that contained both a yellow absorber dye and the carbon depth effect material. The blue sensitive material is described as much coarser grained and (in this context) as not being necessary to have an absorber dye added as it would have problematic effects with the colour of the flash - and indeed the coarseness of its grain and curve shape are described as overall requiring a minimal flash exposure to deal with contrast. From here, it is plausible that the use of yellow absorber dye on regular (still) blue sensitive matrix film with its older grain structure etc provided sufficient depth effect with domestic enlarging light sources to enable its preferential use (both less troublesome to manufacture and easier to assess the matrices after processing etc as they weren't as odd looking as panchro matrix films).

DREW WILEY said:

No Lachlan, you're completely off. Pan Matrix film was basically regular Matrix film with added sensitizer dye to make it pan sensitive. Yes, some carbon was added to, but for another reason. This kind of product needs a much deeper gelatin layer than Super-XX, though Super-XX could be tanned and used for certain other alt techniques. Technicolor made their own DT products. So did Color Corp of America. So did the US military. So did Agfa. Super-XX had an extremely long straight line, so was preferred for color separation negatives. Matrix films were just the opposite and had a terribly long toe, and that's why dye transfer had such a bad time reproducing highlights unless separate highlight masking was done. You're also completely wrong, Mr. Laser; dye transfer printing was the gold standard of color portrait work for several decades and very common with high-end studios. Some of them custom blended their own dyes, just like Technicolor did to match specific movie sets. There were very large labs which did the printing on an assembly-line basis. I met with the former owner of the largest of those labs a couple years ago to try to pry out some secrets. Ctein was kind enough to show me his DT prints of the British Royal Family trust, which demanded DT. The main problem nowadays is that everyone wants everything yesterday; and inkjet is far easier. DT gave much better hue control in my opinion, and dyes have a transparency and life which inks don't. The difference in blacks is stunning. But I certainly don't expect a big commercial revival or either DT still or movies. Even hazmat issues related to industrial quantities of tanning agents limit that possibility. During that era chromogenic 'C' papers didn't have very good permanence. Cibachrome came along and stole some of the thunder from DT, being even more permanent but rather difficult to tame for subtle portrait use (I did a number of portraits with it). Then Kodak became just plain undependable of a supplier. Digital printing gradually kept getting better, and the rest is history. But DT might be around for awhile longer among niche users, and could in fact easily be revived if someone had a sufficient budget for coating matrix film for general distribution. Efke did that about 15 yrs ago.

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I should have used the words "immediately before dye transfer was discontinued there was little portrait use of dye transfer products". In the early 1990s there was one executive photographer in the northern mid-West named David (LeClair?) . Kodak's manufacturing of the products was a "house of cards". Each element interacted with every other element. When one element had a problem the whole imaging system had problems. We kept the product line alive as long as possible. I think most companies would have discontinued it five-ten years before. It was a small volume niche product-line that had many interacting elements. By the 1990's every element had a technical problem either systems issues, environmental issues, material availability etc.


It was a craft product. It did not lend itself to efficient manufacturing practice primarily due to the very small volume and wide non-standardized practices that were common among the product users. It was realized that the business would come to an end because of digital innovations. The users saw that the demand for DT prints was rapidly decreasing. Any dealer or lab that had purchased any Kodak Dye Transfer Products from Kodak in the previous 2 years was personally contacted and had the opportunity to buy as much product as they wanted. It didn't matter if they had bought just one box of paper, one bottle of dye, one box of matrix film or one developer package, They were offered products. As it turned out we had to manufacture some additional developer kits but the demand was such that there were more materials (matrix film, dyes, and paper) available than demand.

Some users took the opportunity to immediately convert to other technologies. He also worked with others who were interested in manufacturing components for dye transfer. We gave them technical information and had several conference calls with people interested in manufacturing the materials themselves. We knew our providing information would be of limited value since any manufacturer would encounter the same difficulties of lack of raw materials, environmental problems etc.

It disturbs me when I read articles saying that Kodak discontinued Dye Transfer Products without giving customers warning. As it turned out we had excess of every single element. After a few years the excess was discarded. For a few years I kept a small quantity of off-the-books film, dyes, and paper that was never requested.

I can't image another large company being as accommodating as Kodak was in this case.

www.makingKODAKfilm.com

Thank for clarifying your meaning, laser. The bigger problem was not formal discontinuance, but Kodak just being flaky and unpredictable about the subject, with users being unable to trust them after a certain point. They also kept changing the yellow dye. The Kodak dye set was a compromise between dye permanence, ease of use, and retouchability, with the yellow dye being the fussiest in this respect. Prior to PS, dye transfer was prized for complex advertising imagery requiring manipulation, whereas some art users were more concerned about lightfastness, so a back-and-forth tug-of-war was going on. Then there were apparently some second-generation factory technicians who delivered substandard this or that, which can be utter hell in a such a complex workflow which a single off step can require recalibration of a lot of things. I was never involved in the fray because I went to Cibachrome like a duck to water as soon as it came out, and am now interested in DT just as fun diversion if I ever can pull myself away from B&W and dramatically improved chromogenic printing for a sufficient block of time. But quite a few people have told me their own stories of just how badly and unpredictably they were burned by Kodak. I had other friends who owned big successful labs and were literally bankrupted by Kodak flaking out on expensive service contracts on their early digital equipment, yet still demanded installment payments! Kodak was such a big company that one department never seemed to know what another was doing, and that was a bad thing for a process like DT which needed a range of supplies. I saw and heard all of that first hand. Kodak did in fact burn a lot of bridges behind them. Unfortunately, with Ron M. now gone, a bit more of the inside story is unavailable; he was somewhat involved in the DT forum too. But some of the old time lab operators were bitter competitors and remain extremely suspicious of one another, to state it mildly. But Jim Browning put a lot of effort up front to revive the process, and a wide range of secrets is now out of the bag, plus working formulas necessary for manufacture. Relevant dyes have aways been readily available, but not in quite as convenient a fashion as Kodak delivered. ... But really, in my opinion it was Cibachrome which really weakened the demand for DT, even if inkjet gave it the final death blow commercially. I do think there is still enough worldwide demand for matrix film and a pre-mordanted paper to justify a modest niche revival. If Bettina and her husband can justify that up-front expense for their own single lab, and have gained commercial viability, it proves a point.

Yes, Lachlan, the black was to control light depth penetration it seems. I can't comment on Technicolor or cinema products, which would have to be far more robust to pass through the machinery than regular DT matrix products. There was a commonality of concept well before Super-XX appeared on the market. But I am very confident in what I said about the long-toe curve of matrix films. I spent a lot of time with Ctein discussing all this, and looking at a very wide range of prints, and it was the biggest problem of the whole system, just like in ordinary matrix printing. I've also discussed it with Jim Browning, who added a superior toe-cutter to his own matrix film formula for this very reason. It's just a fact that DT printing favors shadow values at the expense of highlight due to that miserable toe. David Doubley and others discuss the problem quite a bit. I hope this discussion doesn't confuse ordinary b&w printers, where the toe is just the opposite and affects shadows. Since I'm more comfortable now doing a redux of wash-off relief rather than quickie matrix film dev, I think I'll experiment with a developer with more of a toe cutter in it too and see if that helps. Reduced sensitivity won't be an issue because I have powerful enlargers. But who knows? I'll be tied up all of this Spring and summer doing another type of color printing. I really don't want to get into the fray of who was for blame for what in the final decade of DT. Kodak reminds me of 3M in having had just so many tentacles spread all around that they seem to have lost track of some of them. Too big for its own good. I had enough trouble when the US distributorship of Ciba changed to a careless outfit that mauled the boxes in the warehouse, and that's what prematurely killed it off in this country every bit as much as the advent of inkjet, which doesn't look even remotely the same.

laser said:

It was a craft product.

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Two things I'd be interested to know: apart from Ctein, was there much of a customer base at all for the Pan-Matrix film? And on a more technical level, I understand that most research on DT stopped in the mid 1960's, but what I'd be interested to know is whether the emulsions in the matrix films had made the transition to monodisperse or similar controlled crystal growth structures?

DREW WILEY said:

But I am very confident in what I said about the long-toe curve of matrix films.

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I wouldn't be surprised overall - the general implication in the patents I've seen was that the structure of 'old style' matrix film wasn't great in terms of toe behaviour - to the point that it suggests quite strongly that the emulsions were old-fashioned relatively uncontrolled crystal growth structures with good latitude but not ideal curve shapes. The general indication from the patents was that 1990's emulsion construction techniques allowed for an improvement in curve shape and the use of a single pan-matrix type film for all three Technicolor separations. It's certainly tantalising in terms of what it suggests would be possible were a pan-matrix film to be made anew.

As it is, I'm wondering about having a go at (mis)using aspects of carbon transfer approaches to make a suitable silver-free matrix, albeit only for contact printing from separation negs - essentially coat a transparent wet-media film with a gel layer sensitised with the DAS sensitiser or similar that people are trying to substitute dichromate with, then overcoat it with a carbon pigment in gelatin layer (sensitised too?). Expose to same size neg through the base of the 'matrix', then process/ wash-off, before treating the matrix as per usual DT technique. The staining that DAS can cause in carbon transfer prints would hopefully not be an issue. Would also be a good test of coating technique if nothing else...

Finally, do either of you happen to know what circumstances you'd use a #25, #38a, #61 separation filter combination for? Ended up with a set of these amongst more regular separation filters recently & am a bit perplexed!

Well, I do have to mention Ctein because he claimed to be the ONLY person still doing the pan matrix process, and that's a credible statement because it never was particularly common, and he had rounded up most if not all the remaining stock of pan matrix film. I don't know if he has any left at all, but might still sometimes print from older sets of matrices. You'd have to ask him. In the meantime there was an attempt to revive the non-pan DT process that failed. Then later Jim Browning did a lot of homework and basically replicated the Kodak emulsion formula for regular matrix film with improvements, made his own slot coater, proved that it worked, then had Efke mass-produce the film. I don't know if there was more than one big batch of Efke film or several. Lots of it went to Jim Browning himself and to Bettina in Germany, but it was also purchased by a number of others including me. Bettina subsequently sold off their remaining stock of Efke film when their own proprietary new material arrived, which was formulated specifically for blue-laser exposure and a whole new dye set, so I have no idea how that emulsion specifically differs from the Efke or Kodak varieties. Technicolor is an entirely different subject and much of the later rendition is still secretive. Most of the equipment and significant quantities of dyes were bought by the Chinese and never used. But they won't even sell off tiny samples of the dyes. So who knows if the true Technicolor movie process ever will be revived. But there are entire websites devoted to that subject. Technicolor had a parallel still printing process using their own mfg matrix film, but this was unrelated to their tricolor movie film stock. But I'd get over my head speculating about that kind of thing. Hundreds of different tweaks have been invented over the decades for tricolor printing, far too many to be discussed here. But that odd 25/38a/61 filter set was intended for tricolor separation with micrography - microscopes and their routine light sources, and not regular camera work.

DREW WILEY said:

But the 25/38a/61 filter set was intended for tricolor separation with micrography - microscopes and their routine light sources, and not regular camera work.

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In the context of where the filters came from, that would make sense. The only other possibility was that it was something to do with making pan-matrix exposures using a cold cathode enlarger - but I recall reading that Kodak suggested a #34a in concert with a #29 for that.

The 25 and 34a allow a wider nm bandwidth through than recommended for routine use. There are a number of options, depending whether you are making direct in-camera separations in daylight vs studio tungsten, vs lab separation from chromes vs color negs, vs more exotic technical applications like micrography. It also involves the specific printing dyes in mind and even the specific color films if making separations from them. I won't live long enough to figure out even 2% of this. I'll be happy just to make half a dozen really nice DT prints. I have way too many color prints by other methods already.

Kodak ortho matrix in condenser enlargers was often exposed using W35 filters. the 34A is a narrower 35. @lachlan, you mention two distinct filters: 38a, 34a. One was used in drop filter shutters.

Strange to run across a dye transfer discussion, in view of the fact the materials for that process were discontinued by Kodak, and Kodak sold off all of its stock of dye transfer material to Ctein after they contacted him. Not like there is any of it on the open market, if Ctein bought it up from Kodak, just what was hoarded by the few dye transfer practitioners who existed in 1994! Even Ctein stopped making new dye transfer about 2014.

sasah zib said:

Kodak ortho matrix in condenser enlargers was often exposed using W35 filters. the 34A is a narrower 35. @lachlan, you mention two distinct filters: 38a, 34a. One was used in drop filter shutters.

View attachment 284063 View attachment 284064

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If by 'drop shutter' you mean the Harris shutter effect, yes that seems to have been the main use for the #38a outside of scientific work. The use of the #29/#34a was suggested for making Pan-Matrix sets with 1950s cold cathodes (likely somewhere in the 6000-10000K range from those I've encountered) - though there was a story I encountered of someone (Bob Pace?) who had apparently had an RGB additive cold cathode set of lamps (for sequential exposure I think, though I'd need to look up the reference) made.

wiltw said:

Strange to run across a dye transfer discussion, in view of the fact the materials for that process were discontinued by Kodak, and Kodak sold off all of its stock of dye transfer material to Ctein after they contacted him. Not like there is any of it on the open market, if Ctein bought it up from Kodak, just what was hoarded by the few dye transfer practitioners who existed in 1994! Even Ctein stopped making new dye transfer about 2014.

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That's rather off kilter from what seemed to have happened - from what I understand, Ctein bought up quite a bit of Pan-Matrix when it went off the market a few years before Dye Transfer materials ceased being made by Kodak - and from what Bob Shanebrook has stated on here, despite their best efforts to sell the last batch of dye transfer materials to various practitioners, Kodak still sent a lot of unsold stock for recycling. Nonetheless, there are public domain formulae for all the components in the system, new batches of matrix film and mordanted paper have been made in recent years - and none of the discreet components are particularly high-tech.

Lachlan Young said:

If by 'drop shutter' you mean the Harris shutter effect, yes that seems to have been the main use for the #38a outside of scientific work. The use of the #29/#34a was suggested for making Pan-Matrix sets with 1950s cold cathodes (likely somewhere in the 6000-10000K range from those I've encountered) - though there was a story I encountered of someone (Bob Pace?) who had apparently had an RGB additive cold cathode set of lamps (for sequential exposure I think, though I'd need to look up the reference) made.



That's rather off kilter from what seemed to have happened - from what I understand, Ctein bought up quite a bit of Pan-Matrix when it went off the market a few years before Dye Transfer materials ceased being made by Kodak - and from what Bob Shanebrook has stated on here, despite their best efforts to sell the last batch of dye transfer materials to various practitioners, Kodak still sent a lot of unsold stock for recycling. Nonetheless, there are public domain formulae for all the components in the system, new batches of matrix film and mordanted paper have been made in recent years - and none of the discreet components are particularly high-tech.

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OK, I might have a couple details distorted. Nevertheless it is strange to have active discussion of what had become a dead process in 2014. A bit like discussing processes for Cibachrome printing.

wiltw said:

OK, I might have a couple details distorted. Nevertheless it is strange to have active discussion of what had become a dead process in 2014. A bit like discussing processes for Cibachrome printing.

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It may be dead to you but I am looking forward to making some new masks and separation negatives in the fall so I can roll some prints when the weather keeps me indoors. I am not an accomplished printer but I do enjoy the process and the frustrations associated with it. What the process did teach me was to how to develop negatives with repeatable results.

wiltw said:

Nevertheless it is strange to have active discussion of what had become a dead process in 2014.

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It's no more or less dead than any other analogue colour assembly process. People make multiple colour carbon transfers which are far more tricky in some aspects of procedure and require successful coating of large pigmented gelatin matrices. Cibachrome was a vastly more technically complex manufacturing proposition in comparison to matrix film or the mordanted paper - and even then, dye destruction processes can potentially be handcoated a layer at a time in a home darkroom.

kodak wasn't the first, the last, nor the best (said with a thank-you nod to those retirees of Off-yellow).
Two commercial attempts in this century failed for the same reason Kodak 'failed.' -- to many, dye transfer is a badge on their journey on the skill carousel . People buy the stuff; tinker a bit; get themselves so confused they attend workshops, or read more books, everything but make prints.
Dye transfers are being made on in-date emulsion; being made for current under 40yr olds as well as for the 76rs. There are two groups doing this. Most recent batch (that I've seen) of emulsion being in 2018.

Big labs kept it alive last century. Small labs with dedicated clients, or communes with dedicated members, are keeping it alive this century.

sasah zib said:

kodak wasn't the first, the last, nor the best (said with a thank-you nod to those retirees of Off-yellow).
Two commercial attempts in this century failed for the same reason Kodak 'failed.' -- to many, dye transfer is a badge on their journey on the skill carousel . People buy the stuff; tinker a bit; get themselves so confused they attend workshops, or read more books, everything but make prints.
Dye transfers are being made on in-date emulsion; being made for current under 40yr olds as well as for the 76rs. There are two groups doing this. Most recent batch (that I've seen) of emulsion being in 2018.

Big labs kept it alive last century. Small labs with dedicated clients, or communes with dedicated members, are keeping it alive this century.

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Thx for explanation that alternative sources of materials have become available. I find it puzzling that the dye transfer afficianados like Ctein hung up their spurs and no longer offer new prints, other than what exist from old stock they had hoarded.

for those curious without experience; this is a redacted separation negative. If you read the edges closely, you will know much about the actual neg. Note what is on the edges AND more importantly, what ISN't there.
it was rare that this person used the step scale you see; everything else is common over many years.

@sasah zib If SOP's were followed, that looks like a blue sep on Royal Ortho (if the context of the text on the film defines the era correctly - I've seen the notch code for 4135 Gravure Positive reused on 100TMX, so I'm always wary about notch codes), looks like punched for register with small pins. Did Royal Ortho offer advantages in terms of contrast/ curve behaviour when processed to the needed CI - or was it more for compatibility with something like Tri-X when used to make separations? Either way, if it did the job & got things close enough to be easily adjusted at the assembly step, that's all that really matters with any of the colour assembly processes, be they ink, dye or whatever.

The transparency also looks like it hasn't been frisketed into a bigger piece of film, nor masked down in outline with anything other than the metalwork of the carrier used (fluid mount carrier? looks like there is further pin-reg within that carrier too).

-lachlan : this worker followed Kodak precisely. it is a blue sep; not ortho film .. code notch tells age as well .
NO pins. (cips on hangars for souping) He used the same marking for his mats so seps and mats matched during work. Used standard Omega D equipment. I prefer to use 'notch' side for seps/masks . if you follow strict enough solo practice you can get by with 'location' notch to ID films.
-- aside note: there was a time when GLASS plates were used. there was a time when film would split with small punches;would deform; wouldn't go off and on pins several times; 5 degrees RH change was a problem not readily solved -- the process matured under such circumstances.