Orange Mask on RA4 paper

ericdan · Aug 8, 2017

I've been wondering how the orange mask of color negative film is dealt with on RA4 paper.
The light that's projected onto the paper is still very orange. Is the paper designed to compensate for the orange color?
I know that RA4 papers like Fuji Chrystal archive are also being used for digital prints and lambda type prints from scanned transparencies. If the paper needs to be exposed with an orange mask to produce normal colors how does it handle this when being used for digital prints?

If this has been covered in a pervious thread please direct me to that and I'll close this.

AgX · Aug 8, 2017

The orange mask is designed to form with the erroneous-dye image a uniform orange cast over the whole photograph. This can be filtered out.

FujiLove · Aug 8, 2017

I had assumed the paper 'naturally' (i.e. when exposed to pure white light) tends towards cyan, so the orange film mask filters this back to something close to white.

You can see this if you expose RA4 paper to full room light before developing. You end up with a blue sheet.

FujiLove · Aug 8, 2017

ericdan said:
If the paper needs to be exposed with an orange mask to produce normal colors how does it handle this when being used for digital prints?

Wouldn't it be exactly the same as the optical print? I.e. the film has an orange mask, so the scan is orange. The paper doesn't care whether it's exposed to light shining through the negative, or from some kind of d*****l projection of the scan.

AgX · Aug 8, 2017

RA-4 paper was designed to be least affected by this orange hue, thus when printing from unmasked film it can be benefitial to add an orange filter instead/aside of using the tunable filters of the colorhead. Using such paper with a laser printer only should need respective colour setting of the exposing beams.

(As said in the post above, if the printing file resambles a classic colour negative, such paper would basically be exposed as under an enlarger.)

RPC · Aug 8, 2017

The paper response does cancel the negative's orange color and then some, i.e., there is overkill. The filtration you use in your enlarger exactly offsets the overkill, in a balanced print. A digital system would work similarly.

Photo Engineer · Aug 8, 2017

The red sensitive (cyan) layer is the base speed determining layer. Green (magenta) is about 2 stops faster than red and blue (yellow) is about 4 stops faster. These offsets are what manage the orange color in part. The rest is a 50R bias in these two layers to keep the filtration to 2 colors, M and Y with the various light sources. This is effectively a Tungsten balance.

PE

Orange Mask on RA4 paper

ericdan

AgX

FujiLove

FujiLove

AgX

RPC

Photo Engineer

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