Why did magazines prefer slides to negatives?

I was an expert at masking and printing Ciba - and yes, masking was essential not only for contrast control but also taming the serious hue idiosyncrasies. I soon learned to dance with the medium rather than fight with it. If you wanted something capable of being controlled, it was dye transfer. CN film had their own skewed color and contrast characteristics built-in mainly for sake of portraiture. Both color neg films and RA4 paper have progressively come quite a ways in recent years, and some of the old stereotypes no longer apply. I'm able to make chromogenic prints which even highly experienced pro lab owners can't distinguish from chrome color work. Supplemental masking is often necessary for that level of hue control, as well as correct light balancing filtration at the time of the shot. But due to the virus epidemic, I'm not doing any color printing this season, since it can be a bit irritating to the respiratory system in a way ordinary b&w darkroom work is not. But turning color negs into meaningful color slides would be a difficult task, unless inverting the color via a scan and then using an expensive lossy film recorder option on chrome slide film. I think PE was referring to the antique method of shooting separate tricolor negatives on panchromatic BLACK & WHITE film, making three contact b&w interpositives from these, and using three aligned carbon arc projectors, respectively themselves having RGB filters in place. That could still be done, but color film itself is not even involved.

I don't know if it was said but I think back in the days before maybe the 90s, slide film was just finer grained and gave a superior image. These days Ektachrome is a pretty incredible film but I can't say it's superior to Portra 160 or Ektar specifically. It just has different qualities.

Magazines prefered slides and transparencies for a pretty simple reason, in commercial applications the emulsion would be lifted and stripped into position to create multiple image pages , there were whole crews of emulsion strippers in this industry. I have tried it in a school setting as part of a course on Pre Press Certificate. I worked on a Lisle Camera who's sole purpose was to combine images photographically. The other big reason was that with slides properly done the colour balance/ density was already done , all the page layout person had to do was select from a pile of images( slides) those that worked together. If working from negatives this would be a whole different can of worms and time which pre press shops did not have.

If this has all been discussed earlier my apologies to those who made these two points.

Northeast - The ability of steeper, more separated dye curves to more distinctly differentiate related hues is one of the advantages of chrome films, but at the expense of higher overall contrast. To a certain extent, Ektar does this too, as opposed to other CN films. Portra films are still biassed toward skintones, with lower contrast an a bit of deliberate curve overlapping. I've discovered that Portra 160 is a superb internegative film for chrome originals which have been contrast masked; in other words, using just that portion of the Portra dye spikes which are cleanly separated and not overlapping.

A lot of this discussion about the range of negative film vs reversal film is really moot. Editors need to see and be able to make a selection of photos in a timely manner, cannot wait for prints, so slides are preferable. On the other hand the great majority of magazines are printed on big web presses running at thousands of feet per minute, and the quality of reproduction is not easy to control. Yes, there are and were a handful of high-quality magazines, but most are mediocre at best.

For many applications, "slides" never were accepted. Too small. 4x5 transparencies were a lot easier to evaluate. Some stock agencies didn't accept anything smaller than 4x5.

DREW WILEY said:

For many applications, "slides" never were accepted. Too small. 4x5 transparencies were a lot easier to evaluate. Some stock agencies didn't accept anything smaller than 4x5.

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LF for food and architecture, definitely. Many other magazines did not discriminate that much. And back then most stock photography was crap anyway, second-rate photos that had been duplicated who knows how many times. Plus the good stuff was usually not sold as stock.

Travel, scenic, & technical was mostly LF too, unless action or photojournalism were involved. That started changing once scanning was more the norm. But even the current monthly AAA magazine has lots of utterly predictable old David Muench etc 4x5 stock shots, ironically often reduced smaller than even 4x5. I pity stock photographers today, who are lucky to get pennies on digital royalties. And I outright hate the flat look of newer Natl Geographic magazines and all the conspicuous Digi manipulated imagery. They never were an art magazine, but at least once pretended to be visually and journalistically objective. Too much new toy syndrome.

DREW WILEY said:

AA never did color separation work. He no doubt saw some of his pals and neighbors like Phillip Hyde or Cole Weston doing it for sake of DT printing. Dennis Brokaw lived there too, who wrote Kodak's last DT manual. But AA himself barely understood even basic masking. He farmed out his very limited color shots for printing, wasn't very comfortable with color in general.

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According to the person who operated the Helle scanner for AA (and for catalogs such as Orvis) AA did actually directly enjoy scanning.

Pieter12 said:

LF for food and architecture, definitely. Many other magazines did not discriminate that much. And back then most stock photography was crap anyway, second-rate photos that had been duplicated who knows how many times. Plus the good stuff was usually not sold as stock.

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Doubt you know what the "good stuff" is...and I doubt you know what was "usual" for average/good high quality magazine reproduction. I think you, like all of us, live in worlds of our own.

jtk said:

Doubt you know what the "good stuff" is...and I doubt you know what was "usual" for average/good high quality magazine reproduction. I think you, like all of us, live in worlds of our own.

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I was an advertising art director for major agencies for 40 years. I bought stock photography, assigned original photography. Food, architecture, packaged goods, lifestyle, table-top, you name it. I think I know what the good stuff is.

AA wisely sat in at numerous things involving repro of his images as the adjudicator of the output results. This included "mural" sized enlargements at a properly equipped pro lab as well as certain pre-press operations related to publishing. But that didn't make him the operator per se of any of those things; he simply wasn't qualified. He didn't begin to have that level of color understanding. If you want to look at a contemporary who did - who could take an image all the way from shot to carbro or dye transfer print to final color coffee table book - it would have been Richard Kaufmann. Ansel didn't even have a handle on the ABC's of any of that. He even tried to drag Zone System jargon into color talk. It just wasn't his realm. He was also getting darn old and ailing by the time scanning became predominant. A technician allowing him to punch a few buttons is one thing, but that never made him the technician per se.

jtk said:

Doubt you know what the "good stuff" is...and I doubt you know what was "usual" for average/good high quality magazine reproduction. I think you, like all of us, live in worlds of our own.

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I don't mean to suggest that you lack "good stuff" skills but I do think it's silly to talk about what was "usual" a long time ago.

DREW WILEY said:

AA wisely sat in at numerous things involving repro of his images as the adjudicator of the output results. This included "mural" sized enlargements at a properly equipped pro lab as well as certain pre-press operations related to publishing. But that didn't make him the operator per se of any of those things; he simply wasn't qualified. He didn't begin to have that level of color understanding. If you want to look at a contemporary who did - who could take an image all the way from shot to carbro or dye transfer print to final color coffee table book - it would have been Richard Kaufmann. Ansel didn't even have a handle on the ABC's of any of that. He even tried to drag Zone System jargon into color talk. It just wasn't his realm. He was also getting darn old and ailing by the time scanning became predominant. A technician allowing him to punch a few buttons is one thing, but that never made him the technician per se.

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Kaufman doesn't ring bells. Got a link?

However if you worked inside/with serious professional color photolabs (I did) you would know that "Zone System jargon" was routine among the best printers at better color printing professionals in the 70s-80s... In fact, color printing conversations were more sophisticated than Zone System conversations...

No need for us to argue, especially as the arguments revolve around dead people who seem not to have written about the topics.

It's important to remember that EK was never perfect or even entirely well-intended. You may recall the need to use CC (Color Compensation) filters to approximate neutral each lot of EK professional Ektachrome. You may also remember that EK shipped masss quantities of what was arguably its very worst film, Vericolor (the first year long iteration, followed by Vericolor II) which degraded terribly and quickly, making it very difficult for EK's wedding/portrait victims, to deliver goodish reprint approximations of original prints.

You are sure showing your ignorance of color photography, esp if you once worked in the SF area. Kaufmann owned Houghton Mifflen, on of the finest picture book printers out there at the time, was instrumental in the revival of color carbon printing. I don't know who you hung around, but none of the rest of us used Zone jargon for color work. I could run rings around most pro lab printers.

Pieter12 said:

jtk said:

Doubt you know what the "good stuff" is...and I doubt you know what was "usual" for average/good high quality magazine reproduction. I think you, like all of us, live in worlds of our own.

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I was an advertising art director for major agencies for 40 years. I bought stock photography, assigned original photography. Food, architecture, packaged goods, lifestyle, table-top, you name it. I think I know what the good stuff is.

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DREW WILEY said:

You are sure showing your ignorance of color photography, esp if you once worked in the SF area. Kaufmann owned Houghton Mifflen, on of the finest picture book printers out there at the time, was instrumental in the revival of color carbon printing. I don't know who you hung around, but none of the rest of us used Zone jargon for color work. I could run rings around most pro lab printers.

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Thank you Mr Trump .

Remember when the Sierra Club starting putting out those big glossy coffee table books. The first ones in color featured Eliot Porter and Richard K. You might remember "My First Summer in the Sierra", which was republished in paperback a couple of times. Well, RK not only shot all that, but then took those early "worthless" color negs, as you refer to them, went through the especially tricky process of turning those (not chromes) into separation negs, made quad pigment carbro prints - a far more difficult process than dye transfer (but some of those too), and then made fresh separations from those, and finally personally made and fine-tuned the printing plates, all prior to scanners. But very few color books today attain the same level of quality. Very few people have ever had the time and financial resources to do so. It was a labor of love. He subsequently got involved, along with Bill Nordstrom, with the development of the Ultrastable pigment process, Polaroid Permanent process, and Evercolor. None of those had lasting commercial viability, but almost every color alt printer today owes a debt of gratitude to people like these for keeping such things alive for the next generation. I was perfectly content with humble Cibachrome, but even I knew the difference between real home cookin' and the clock-in/clock-out commercial mentality.

Well for a start slides are viewed by transmitted light and have something like a 30% higher brightness range than prints ( hence people glued to their phones and computer screens). But I would suggest that the critical factor of preference for printers is the fact that the maximum highlight value is immediately noticeable. The eye always goes to the brightest part of the picture and so a printer can instantly see if this picture will work in print.

DREW WILEY said:

You are sure showing your ignorance of color photography, esp if you once worked in the SF area. Kaufmann owned Houghton Mifflen, on of the finest picture book printers out there at the time, was instrumental in the revival of color carbon printing. I don't know who you hung around, but none of the rest of us used Zone jargon for color work. I could run rings around most pro lab printers.

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DREW WILEY said:

You are sure showing your ignorance of color photography, esp if you once worked in the SF area. Kaufmann owned Houghton Mifflen, on of the finest picture book printers out there at the time, was instrumental in the revival of color carbon printing. I don't know who you hung around, but none of the rest of us used Zone jargon for color work. I could run rings around most pro lab printers.

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Drew correct me if I am wrong.. did you make your living printing for others or were you not in the service sector doing other things?... I actually have worked with some of the finest pro printers in my career or competed against them and actually still do, your comments are quite bold you should retract that statement or modify it... As it is silly .. I was a great hockey player but never made the NHL.

DREW WILEY said:

Remember when the Sierra Club starting putting out those big glossy coffee table books. The first ones in color featured Eliot Porter and Richard K. You might remember "My First Summer in the Sierra", which was republished in paperback a couple of times. Well, RK not only shot all that, but then took those early "worthless" color negs, as you refer to them, went through the especially tricky process of turning those (not chromes) into separation negs, made quad pigment carbro prints - a far more difficult process than dye transfer (but some of those too), and then made fresh separations from those, and finally personally made and fine-tuned the printing plates, all prior to scanners. But very few color books today attain the same level of quality. Very few people have ever had the time and financial resources to do so. It was a labor of love. He subsequently got involved, along with Bill Nordstrom, with the development of the Ultrastable pigment process, Polaroid Permanent process, and Evercolor. None of those had lasting commercial viability, but almost every color alt printer today owes a debt of gratitude to people like these for keeping such things alive for the next generation. I was perfectly content with humble Cibachrome, but even I knew the difference between real home cookin' and the clock-in/clock-out commercial mentality.

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You are missing ... Stephen Livik... he was and still is one of the greatest gum printers. You could also thank Todd Gangler to actually revive tri colour carbon and now Calvin Grier.

cliveh said:

Well for a start slides are viewed by transmitted light and have something like a 30% higher brightness range than prints ( hence people glued to their phones and computer screens). But I would suggest that the critical factor of preference for printers is the fact that the maximum highlight value is immediately noticeable. The eye always goes to the brightest part of the picture and so a printer can instantly see if this picture will work in print.

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this goes with my post #103 , the editors could immediately see what worked and what did not on a page.

Hi Bob, Yes, I've been following the work of Todd G. too; but these are almost grandchildren generation to those I mentioned. And it's very encouraging what you're doing too to advance certain techniques and put them in the public eye. I don't know if I'll ever drift down that road myself; I already have plenty to do. But that doesn't prevent me from admiring other techniques and studying them somewhat. I was just a child myself when some of the finest work was being done. Then there was actually a number of what I might term second generation color carbon workers here in northern California, but outnumbered by DT printers, a few of whom were really good, but most not. Then the Ciba revolution arrived, and I immediately got aboard that for it's own duration. It's been fun; but no color printing for me this season - don't want to risk any kind of respiratory irritation under the present circumstances.

I new of Kaufman he was way ahead of his time. in the mid 90's i I took a tri colour carbon workshop in Maine Photo Workshops sponsored by Charles Berger.. we had his original material and the course was taught by a talented and engaging photographer from Los Angeles.. His work was quite good, therefore Charles trusted him to teach but the Main workshop space was a disaster and negatives were not made to any satisfaction.. I felt like I was at a Jimmy Jones revival retreat... John Bentley was crashing at my place at the time, he went on to be very good and current friends of Todd and of course Charles. They both were recipients of this knowledge but did not share well.Johns prints are magnificent.
The person to watch right now is a young dude from spain.. His name is Calvin Grier and is a bright light in permanent printing .



The big problem was at the time making the proper negs required sophisticated scanners and image setters , well beyond the capability of most back then, Fast Forward 25 years , today that is not the case .

Thanks for sharing that. A lot of the image setter work I saw had really awful blocked-up colors. Apparently it was related to less than ideal programming. The best quad carbons I saw were from real film optical separations, sometimes in-camera. But they were small, often took a week or more to make, not counting bellyflops. But I preferred the contone look over the commercial halftone methods. With dye transfer, the dyes bled enough that any dot pattern was disguised. Ironically, the preferred optical route often did show conspicuous grit when Super-XX separations and smaller formats were involved. Different looks. Too many flavors in the ice cream shop, too little time to try them all.