Please feel free to share. Otherwise dcy's conjectures are exactly as good as yours.
To expand a bit on what I said earlier, here's how I see it. And I invite people with more in-depth knowledge such as@Lachlan Young,
@laser and
@Henning Serger to rectify my conjectures where they miss the mark.
Firstly, when it comes to masking, I see generally 3 ways in which this could be done:
1: Just add an orange color to the emulsion. Doesn't matter how or what; as long as it sort of looks orange like regular CN film, it's OK.
2: Add a static (i.e. not image-density dependent) orange mask to the emulsion that's intended to compensate to an extent for the imperfections of the image-forming dyes. The density of this mask would have to be a compromise based on e.g. average image density in a typical frame.
3: Add an image-wise mask that effectively compensates for the image-forming dye imperfections, in a dynamic (so image density-dependent) way. This would require a chemical mechanism that destroys or prevents formation of the masking dyes where image density is formed.
1 & 2 are relatively simple and along the lines of what
@MattKing suggests above.
I honestly don't expect that any self-respecting manufacturer would actually do (1), but I include it anyway because it's pretty much the only way I can see a company could include a new masking approach in a CN film using only 'hours' of R&D work and 'weeks' of lead time to a functional product. But I think it's a far-fetched hypothesis even for InovisCoat as this would really constitute nothing more than a cosmetic 'improvement', although it may help in nudging automated minilab scanners a little more in the right direction w.r.t. color balancing. This could be as simple as taking any old dyes, preferably somewhat stable, regardless of their actual spectral characteristics, and mix them to produce an orange/brown hue that's reminiscent of regular CN film.
#2 is a reasonably realistic approach and I guess that it has been done before or is currently being done. It's a nice intermediate step towards true masking as described in #3 and would make an actual improvement (at least in the chosen 'sweet spot' of the HD curves) in hue purity. Technologically it's only a little more complex than #1, but it does of course bring the challenge of selecting a dye system that will effectively compensate for the hue impurities of the image-forming dyes - so not just about any set of dyes would do, as would be the case in #1. This likely also starts to bring issues with potential patent infringement (and both Kodak and Fuji, who hold large portfolios of patent, are very much alive and capable of litigation), so considerable time may have to be spent in determining a solution that will (a) work and (b) not set off the legal depts of the big guys. So overall, this will be more time-consuming and costly than #1.
The end goal of course is always #3, in which any number of gradations of complexity can probably be discerned, depending on how perfect the compensation will need to be (think about measures taken to affect toe and shoulder behavior and maintain perfect tracking also in those parts of the curve). Evidently, R&D expenditure is pretty massive, as is evidenced by the time it took the big guys to work it out in the 1950-60s (or whenever they approached this point), but also by the pace at which Harman is progressing with their color product (unless someone is cynical enough to believe they have already cracked that nut and are now milking a long series of half-way house intermediate prototypes.) We know for a fact that Harman is employing several people on their color development. They have a whole set of challenges on their plates, of course - but hey, so does Ino/Filmotec.
So based on technical complexity, it's unlikely that either #2 or let alone #3 would be feasible in response to a single customer pestering Filmotec for a bit and waving a modest amount of cash in their general direction. Looking at things from that end, we could make some haphazard quantitative assumptions and see how the numbers would work out. Keep in mind we're not talking about Kodak and Fuji here, so production batch sizes will likely be a heck of a lot smaller. Let's say an initial market-oriented production batch would be, ah, wild guess, 50k rolls for this new Orwo 200 product. Let's also say that for the purpose of this incremental development of the product, around $0.50 per roll would be made available for R&D expenditure (which I think is rather on the very generous side). This would mean an R&D budget of $25k. You can't do all that much for that kind of money. Put a chemical engineer into a well-equipped lab and he'll burn through $1k/day easily in brut wages, cost of capital, materials etc. That means 20 days of work plus a little administrative overhead, and at that point nobody in the R&D chain has made any money off of the thing except 'Bernd the Dipl. Ing' who goes home with a decent but still modest salary. You can't do all that much in 20 days - maybe, if you're very lucky, #1. But only downhill with the wind in your back and looking at the end product with not too critical a QA focus. So also from that end, things don't really look in favor of "yes, dear customer, we will make you a properly masked film out of nowhere in little to no time at all."
In all likelihood, reality was a combination of (1) something in along the lines of fairly rudimentary masking, potentially based on 1950-60s Agfa technology, and (2) incorporation of this technology that was already started on some years ago by the people behind InovisCoat, who now saw an opportunity start recouping some of the (sunk, in bankruptcies) costs of those developments in a marketable product.
So that's the conjecture from my end, which I think is fairly close to what
@Lachlan Young proposed. I wouldn't call the above a 'strong suspicion' - I'd really call it a wild guess based on a very informal paper napkin exercise. And I think that this exercise already blows pretty big holes in a 'strong suspicion' that was put forth earlier. Which indeed I approached critically, because before doing the paper napkin approach, I had a feeling of "that doesn't sound quite right".
I'll very happily stand corrected on any of the above - and I really mean that. It'd be cool if people could add and rectify to my wild guess based on more firm knowledge of the technology as well as the micro-economics involved.
