Dye Transfer printing – a lost art.

A printing process that although expensive & rather complicated, gave wonderful colour prints.
Unfortunately, Kodak in 1994 (the only supplier) ceased production of all materials for using this process. A great shame because the method gave incredible control of both colour & contrast for the finished print: it must be noted that this was control over sections of the print (just like in B&W printing) not just changing the look of the complete print.
The process involved taking a well exposed and developed transparency (the larger the better) and from this; producing a series of contrast masks, highlight masks, and separation negatives, you are then ready to expose the matrix film. The matrices (3 of them) are exposed with R separation & placed in a cyan dye, the G in the magenta dye and the B in yellow dye. These were then rolled out onto the dye transfer paper (in registration) with the combination of all three producing the final colour print.

Get a cup of coffee or depending on the time of day, a glass of wine and watch this entertaining short video, then look at some of the links I have provided to see the method & final result.

 

http://www.charlescramer.com/dyetransfer.html

http://ctein.com/postlist2.htm

It beats the hell out of sitting in front of a computer screen with Photoshop or Lightroom !!!