What is the fancy name for C-41 and RA4 processed prints.

[Ironage]

I have a little showing of some of my color work taken many years ago. I have noticed over the years that in describing their work, photographers will describe black and white prints as "silver gelatin print". Sound so fancy! What should I call my C-41 negatives printed on RA-4 paper?

[Tin Can]

Hand Made

Analog Process

Chemical Image

No Computer Used

[Oren Grad]

Both C-41 and RA-4 are chromogenic processes. Museums and galleries often label the prints as "chromogenic prints".

[Ironage]

I think I will go with "Hand Made Chromogenic Prints".

[reddesert]

Museums use these terms to indicate the material, which matters for conservation purposes, as well as to be fancy. My memory of this is that "silver gelatin print" = B&W on fiber base, "silver print" = B&W on RC paper (this doesn't make a lot of sense to me, doesn't RC paper have gelatin?), and "chromogenic color print" for RA-4 or other C-prints. Cibachrome or Ilfochrome got called something else (maybe simply referred to by the brand name).

[Oren Grad]

Cibachrome or Ilfochrome got called something else (maybe simply referred to by the brand name).

When they want to be schmancy they call it "dye destruction".

[reddesert]

When they want to be schmancy they call it "dye destruction".

Thanks, pretty sure that is the phrase I had lost.

Who wouldn't want to make a dye destruction print? It has a nice revolutionary-fervor sound to it.

[bob carnie]

C print, colour Print, dye coupler print if you want to get fancy

[Drew Wiley]

Dye destruction prints involving a strong acid like former Cibachrome/Ifochrome are "chromolytic" prints. More ordinary prints generated from dye couplers, creating the final hues secondarily, are "chromogenic", associated with RA4 chemistry, and often in the past were abbreviated as "C-prints". The less common "R print" method involved positive film originals instead, and reversal during processing. Dye transfer prints were a multiple pass technique, transferring dye from a special film to a mordanted paper.

Then there are all kinds of hand-layered processes involving actual pigments (not to be confused with modern inkjet printing, which is NOT in fact a true pigment medium). And those kinds of folks might resent the term "hand made" being applied to any commercialized process. You're expected to choose your own colorants and coat your own paper, layer after layer.

[Tin Can]

There are no rules in Love, War and Art

[Drew Wiley]

There are defined legal rules against MARKETING prints as something they're really not. For example, a mass-produced photolithograph can't legally be sold as a real lithograph. Terminology counts. And even if those kinds of laws haven't reached down to the inkjet level yet, calling those ink productions "pigment prints" per se is inherently deceptive. They're not, can't be, or all the colorants wouldn't even squeeze through those tiny nozzles, if all the colorants were real pigment particles.

If dye destruction printing like Cibachrome were revived, along with R-printing as it once was, I'd hate to see one confused for the other, or sold as if the other. There are real permanence implications. So there are rules to art. Do whatever you want, whatever you like doing - yes - but don't call it what it's not.

Terminology has connotations. For instance, calling something a C-print was once a pejorative. It implies something way cheaper to make and fading way faster than a dye transfer print. But dye transfer is largely (not completely) extinct, and chromogenic prints have dramatically improved, and deservedly shed their old put-down abbreviation, though it still appears on certain product labels. Terminology becomes slang, and slang often becomes stereotypical slander; but we still need terminology.

[Wayne]

also

Cibachrome= silver-dye bleach print. That's what I always used when I displayed mine

I've always liked RA4= dye coupler print, as Bob mentioned. Maybe I just like the word dye.

[bob carnie]

also

Cibachrome= silver-dye bleach print. That's what I always used when I displayed mine

I've always liked RA4= dye coupler print, as Bob mentioned. Maybe I just like the word dye.

I think I like this name dye coupler print because it helps me understand how the process works a bit and reminds me that these types of prints are dye based.

[Wayne]

I think I like this name dye coupler print because it helps me understand how the process works a bit and reminds me that these types of prints are dye based.

I like it because dye-coupler sounds cool.

[Chester McCheeserton]

I've heard people use the term 'optical print' or 'optical chromogenic print' to differentiate between a hand made analog print made at an enlarger and a lightjet or lambda type print, that while still processed with the same chemistry and still having the same material makeup is generated from a digital file...