Making Commercial Color Separation Negatives of Transparencies for the Kodak Dye Transfer Process

gordrob said:

It is definitely faster than having to make masks and separation negatives with film. My goal is to be able to make separation negatives to project onto a matrix film. I have been fighting with trying to make separation negatives and masks from 35mm transparencies and a process like this would really make life easier. Thanks for your reply.

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Gord, have you used any of the methods for making photographic separation negatives I posted here? I hope they can be helpful to people interested in this approach. Its good to hear someone else interested in making DT prints on here.

The best DT work I've ever personally seen was that of John Wawrzonek.

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He probably used a shadow contrast increase mask with the separations, either as a “black” mask made to be exposed in contact with the pan masking film and separation negative for the CRM, or off an intermediate interpositive. I believe he was using Separation Negative films.

I forgot to mention that in terms of intermediate highlight masking, it's often a lot easier and certainly more cost effective simply to do it via manual shading on a frosted slip sheet, or on the base of the film
back when retouch tooth was common, at least with sheet films having sufficient surface area. It's fairly easy to transfer that kind of skill set over from a Ciba or even a Graphics prepress background to DT, or visa versa. I did a lot of selective bleaching of silver masks using dilute Farmer's Reducer.

I see that David Doubley's site is still up, filled with all kinds of traditional DT info, including pan matrix use. He made the site non-downloadable, and with a finite span of availability. If that's still the case, those interested absorb what you can. He once offered all this in handbook form; I don't know if any copies are left.

There are all kinds of web and even in-print resources on making hybrid masks,separations, and enlarged contact printing negs using Pictorio film etc. I won't go into the pros and cons, and will stick with an all-darkroom workflow for this particular thread. It's also entirely feasible to make color separations from digital camera shots - again, a topic best discussed under hybrid technique, and not here. I'm as guilty as anyone else when it comes to wandering off-topic; but that could be especially confusing in this case.

IB Photochemistry said:

All chromogenic color materials, E6 films, RA-4 papers, and color reversal papers, have internal color masking for correction of their OWN DYES.

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This is very much incorrect. RA4 for instance has masking whatsoever. But it's inconsequential as the dyes in chromogenic films (what's in a name!) are fundamentally different from dyes used in dye transfer, where no coupler technology is involved. So my recommendation would be to drop the tangent of dyes in chromogenic films as it has no relevance to a discussion of dye transfer. This will also avoid the unnecessary complication of confusion between internal masking in color negative film vs. 'masking' as a result of inter-layer effects within the film during processing vs. masking as it's done during printing with external/physical masks manually exposed from an original (or today, inkjet printed). Only the latter is relevant in this discussion and for a variety of reasons, it's just not very useful to include chromogenic materials into this discussion.

IB Photochemistry said:

I will soon post some examples of some Dye Transfer prints I rolled myself, some of my equipment used, and separation negatives, and masks.

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I would very much welcome this; I also think it would be relevant/interesting for a wider audience than the present, small circle of discussants in this thread. I would also consider (recommend) to start a new thread for this purpose, which might focus on practical comments on the basics of the dye transfer process as you practice it.

Moderator note: this discussion has for some time now been quite fierce, and in itself this is not something that warrants intervention. However, at times, it borders on name-calling and other forms of disrespectful behavior. Please refrain from such behavior and keep the exchange civil. Thank you.