RYB, Artist's Palette and Kodak Colors

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Dec 16, 2013

For me, biggest problem in color photography , who, how experts decide and protect Kodak color palette or Fuji Palette. You can decide red must between that and that but chemically do so is the art. I know Kodak and color experts , anthropologists asks different groups about their culture with showing them color charts.

I found that artists always used RYB color palette for centuries and I saw some charts about the RYB color wheels and I said that is Ektachrome. I dont know was it possible to emulate RYB with RGB Film inside filters or may be directly using RYB filters in the film. I have no idea.

If Photo Engineer and friends could shed some light , it would be great.

Umut

ME Super · Dec 16, 2013

Hi Umut,
While I'm not PE, I do know a little bit about color theory. Not much, but a little.

Light uses additive color. Three useful additive colors are Red, Green, and Blue. If W=White, R=Red, G=Green, and B=Blue, then W=R+G+B.
Modern color film (and paints, dyes, and other things) uses subtractive color. Three useful subtractive colors are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. Using the definitions for additive color variables, C=Cyan, M=Magenta, and Y=Yellow, and C=G+B, M=R+B, and Y=R+G. Throw in a little more algebra, and we can see that C=W-R, M=W-G, and Y=W-B. Leave out the W, as it's implied, and you get: Cyan = Minus Red, Magenta = Minus Green, and Yellow = Minus Blue.

To get Red, Green, and Blue in transparency film, you use dyes from two layers, so for red you use Minus Green and Minus Blue dyes (magenta and yellow). For green you use minus red and minus blue dyes (cyan and yellow). And for blue you use minus red and minus green (cyan and magenta) dyes. In this way you can get RGB from CMY.

I hope I wasn't too confusing.

Photo Engineer · Dec 16, 2013

Early workers in color called Cyan Blue. They called Magenta Red or Purple. So, the problem is that the nomenclature or naming methods have changed.

PE

Prof_Pixel · Dec 16, 2013

VERY simply put:

For many years, Kodak prided itself on 'accurate' color reproduction and chose dyes that produced that 'accurate' result - if you put a picture of a color checker chart next to a color image, they would 'match'. In the early '80s, Fuji brought out a series of color films with saturated colors and customers loved them. (If you took a photo of your house in August, the Kodak films gave you accurate colors - dull skies and brown grass. The Fuji films produced blue skies and green grass. (Such colors were often referred to as 'memory colors'.))

Kodak did considerable customers research on customer reproduction preferences. Digital technology was used to produce sample prints of the same scene with different color reproduction. Before digital, such test were prepared by coating a variety of emulsion color test, Such tests were rarely 'clean' - meaning you got the color change you wanted but also got things you didn't want. With the digitally produced images, once the color preferences were established, emulsion workers worked to reproduce the desired results. The results were the more highly color saturated Kodak products of the late '80s.

Alan Klein · Dec 16, 2013

Prof_Pixel said:
VERY simply put:

For many years, Kodak prided itself on 'accurate' color reproduction and chose dyes that produced that 'accurate' result - if you put a picture of a color checker chart next to a color image, they would 'match'. In the early '80s, Fuji brought out a series of color films with saturated colors and customers loved them. (If you took a photo of your house in August, the Kodak films gave you accurate colors - dull skies and brown grass. The Fuji films produced blue skies and green grass. (Such colors were often referred to as 'memory colors'.))

Kodak did considerable customers research on customer reproduction preferences. Digital technology was used to produce sample prints of the same scene with different color reproduction. Before digital, such test were prepared by coating a variety of emulsion color test, Such tests were rarely 'clean' - meaning you got the color change you wanted but also got things you didn't want. With the digitally produced images, once the color preferences were established, emulsion workers worked to reproduce the desired results. The results were the more highly color saturated Kodak products of the late '80s.

This didn't include Kodachrome, did it? Wasn't its palette different?

Prof_Pixel · Dec 16, 2013

The particular work I mentioned was for color negative film. However, the aim of 'accurate' color reproduction applied across the board. In all cases, film builders were limited by the dye set they used so I guess 'accurate' doesn't always mean 'perfect'.

Photo Engineer · Dec 16, 2013

That push for garish colors was on when I started in on Gold 400. They aimed for higher contrast and higher dye saturation. Kodachrome always had the high contrast, high saturation and we used to say it could make a garbage dump look pretty. Sorry for offending Kodachrome users, but that Fuji effect was long known by the Kodachrome people. I think Fuji learned this trick from Kodachrome and the negative film people at EK learned it back from Fuji.

Full circle I would surmise.

PE

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Dec 16, 2013

And after all , with living 10 minutes walking distance to Europe's 3 biggest trading and biggest electronics markets , only Kodak film I could find is empty kodak paper packages in aim to display purpose. I could punch middle of his face.

Gerald C Koch · Dec 16, 2013

Alan Klein said:
This didn't include Kodachrome, did it? Wasn't its palette different?

Yes one of the couplers used in the Kodachrome process was not a particularly good fit. Its presence resulted in this film's distinctive look. Some people loved it others hated it.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Dec 17, 2013

Gerald,
Can you give the couplers name and its color ?

PE and friends,

Was Ektachrome older than the Kodachrome , it has very strong foliage palette , oranges , orange browns , reddish oranges , most beatiful red hunter jackets and deep sky colors.

If Fuji had been copied that , We would live in a different world.

Umut

Tom1956 · Dec 17, 2013

I remember when the green boxes were first hitting the market. Say...1969 or so? (In SE US). The commercials on TV used to tout how the Japanese eyeball was so much more color-responsive than the American eyeball. And went on to use that "fact" to explain Fuji's superior color response and saturation in their brand of film. And the bright green box looked prettier than the boring looking Kodak yellow boxes. And that's the story of Fuji's market entrance in the US market. Oh, and it was cheap, too. (that always helps).

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Dec 17, 2013

Who buys green boxes , only the farmers and vegeterians. American eyeball ? , what is american eyeball ? Is there such a race ? If you talk about colors , come and tell to Indians and Chinese people ! They drink tea since BC 2752 , 4765 years !

Why americans pay such a money to Japan , why dont they apply tariffs ? What is the reason of such a big import ? And We can not sell anything to USA because of tariffs !

Tom1956 · Dec 17, 2013

Mustafa Umut Sarac said:
Who buys green boxes , only the farmers and vegeterians. American eyeball ? , what is american eyeball ? Is there such a race ? If you talk about colors , come and tell to Indians and Chinese people ! They drink tea since BC 2752 , 4765 years !

Why americans pay such a money to Japan , why dont they apply tariffs ? What is the reason of such a big import ? And We can not sell anything to USA because of tariffs !

I only report what the commercials on TV said. I was only 12, 13, 14 years old maybe. As far as I know, there is no "American race". If so, they were Winston Churchill's words. I drink iced tea, as that's the only way tea is supposed to be. As far as the relationship between the US and Japan, such relationship probably dates back to the aftermath of the war, and reconstruction. The last question is undoubtedly political, which is a subject of much head-scratching and angst.
At the time of entry of the green boxes in the American market, coincided with the disappearance of the red ones (Ansco), so perhaps there was a void. Kodak was king. (still is, just a smaller kingdom).

Photo Engineer · Dec 17, 2013

Kodachrome was Kodak's first reversal color film.

The cyan coupler was the offending coupler. It had a very narrow band width which meant that the unit neutral was distorted. That led to bright garish colors with a green cast to neutrals.

PE

Tom1956 · Dec 17, 2013

George Eastman never got to live to see the multilayer all-on-one color film. I suppose he did get to see Technicolor, which was not the same. I wonder if he would have ever imagined film technology getting to where it did.

wildbillbugman · Dec 17, 2013

Of course, this entire thread is irrelevant if you happen to be an insect. My good buddies, the mantids, can see well into the U.V. range. I let them be my guides.
Bill

DREW WILEY · Dec 18, 2013

It's the laws of both physics and physiology which constitute RGB into true additive color, and CMY into subtractive. Mixing apples with oranges in this respect (RYB) is just poor education, inherited from kindergarten finger painting classes it seems. After that, it's an extremely complicated problem of finding "ideal" dyes or pigments for particular applications, which of course don't really exist, so things need to be tweaked. For example, the older Ektachrome green reproduction was rather contaminated with magenta. Fuji cleaned up the problem long before Kodak did. But people tend to misinterpret visual reality for what they are photographically accustomed to. Early pigment prints generally used alizaron crimson, chromium oxide green, and cadmium yellow - and other than being rather efficient at poisoning the user,
was really a very poor set of process colors. Still, people made it work and some wonderful if rather unrealistic prints transpired from time to
time. Photographic color is never reality, even in the best of circumstances. But back to film - I personally switched over to the "green boxes" because with Fuji sheet film the green was so much easier to tame when printing Cibachrome. Not until Kodak came out with E100G did they have an equivalent product. And sheet Kodachrome was long long gone (though I did print 35mm and 120 Kodachrome, along with
old-style Agfachromes and numerous other things - each with its own "look").

DREW WILEY · Dec 18, 2013

Totally off topic, but Wild Bill... Have you ever seen the courtship dance of a mantispid? It's highly elaborate, just like some bird species, but
in the end the wife ends up eating the husband alive head first, just like praying mantis species do. And for their diminished size, they're even
more remarkable in the way they can snatch a housefly mid-flight with their forearms.

Gerald C Koch · Dec 18, 2013

Some wives eat their husbands alive. It's just that in the human species it takes a lot longer, sometimes years. Still it's not a pretty sight.

wildbillbugman · Dec 19, 2013

Drew,
I have not seen the mating dance of mantispids, That is something that I will absolutely look into.
Only about 20% of praying mantis males get eaten by their "wives" That is a better record than humanity. It has to do with mantis species and their natural environment. Mantises from humid climates hardly ever need to move. These are less aggressive than species from arid climates, where food must be hunted.
The mantispid attaches is self to spiders and eats the eggs as they are laid.

RYB, Artist's Palette and Kodak Colors

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