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

[IB Photochemistry]

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.

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.

 

[IB Photochemistry]

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

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.

 

[DREW WILEY]

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.

 

[koraks]

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

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.

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

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.

 

[koraks]

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.

 

[koraks]

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.

Thanks for the tip; IDK what the bit about 'non-downloadable' was about, but everything seems to be there and easily downloadable. It's found here: http://daviddoubley.com/DyeTransfer.htm

 

[Lachlan Young]

Pan Matrix 4149 was a 1960's emulsion, it had another designation before that. Kodak decided to discontinue it a few years before Dye Transfer was discontinued; it had nothing to do with “lack of sophistication”.

You've been beating this dead horse into dust for decades and it'll never be what your fantasies want it to have been.

It was not a sophisticated product, and that made it harder to manufacture as outright material wastage (consequent with shrinking demand) became a real factor. The one difference in practical terms between what Kodak made and something like the Browning emulsion, is that Kodak had achieved a degree more monodispersity in grain structure. But that's the difference between a 1940s emulsion and a 1950s emulsion, nothing newer. Trying to equivocate and swivel around on the matter of sensitising dyes (of course Kodak's would have picked something reasonably close for a colour neg film of the era it was designed in) or depth effect dyes/ pigment dispersion (depth effect control is not a million miles away from anti-halation or dealing with internal reflections) belies how little you really know about the basics of what the emulsion needs to do. In terms of the needed speed/ grain and other emulsion characteristics required to make the gelatin matrix work, something close to Super-XX would have made enormous sense for Pan-Matrix.

Anyway, there's no point in continuing this any further as you have never seemingly had any interest in the practical material reality of the product, but rather in confecting the former dye transfer industry into some sort of closed shop of secret knowledge intimately tied to Kodak, rather than as a group of highly skilled craftspeople who readily borrowed techniques from their graphic arts colleagues as and where necessary to get jobs out the door, and with colours/ tone scales that made the relevant art director happy. Most of the people I've encountered who work or worked in colour separation by analogue means have given very freely of their knowledge. As I said earlier, the real skill is in the assembly step.