Coating COLOR emulsion at home

[jnantz]

seems that at this point in time it might be an easier task to make dye transfer prints. at least a few years ago the matrices were still being made
and it is a KNOWN PROCESS that is archival. my uncle used to make them, and while they took many hours to make they were worth it .. being a permanent image.
although trichromes are a close second seeing the color image is made from stable archivaly processed b/w film which some suggest will never stop being made.
autochromes are nice ( the linked modern autochromes are nice ) but it is a mystery, still ... even the george eastman house doesn't make them ...

[StoneNYC]

Stone, just a comment on Xray film (well some Xray film). It may not be sensitive throughout the visible spectrum. The common Ektascan B/RA is not sensitive in the red so not suitable for tricolor applications. I think you can use blue and green although there may be some serious falloff in sensitivity as you go through the green.

Xray film types with intensifying screens tend to show spikey peaks when adjusted for the visible range and are also not so useful for trichrome applications. The three phosphor types plotted below show the telltale spikes compared to the normal cutoff of standard silver halide Xray film.


Picture 2 by hypolimnas, on Flickr

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Thanks, I feel foolish, having not yet don't masking myself, I was under the impression that you were mostly dealing with the density of the film grains themselves and not the colors so I was thinking the density would affect the exposure no matter what, but if the masks' density is created from the color dye in the film, then I guess it wouldn't work.

[Bill Burk]

How about taking an existing emulsion of film and coating with a stripping layer. Print that (in the dark of course) with an inkjet color pattern of filters. A stochastic/random pattern would be best. A different pattern for each pass would make it more beautiful and more difficult for someone to figure out your process by looking at several shots that you make this way.

Then strip the film, develop it and scan. And overlay the color pattern in the computer.

[Kirk Gittings]

seems that at this point in time it might be an easier task to make dye transfer prints. at least a few years ago the matrices were still being made
and it is a KNOWN PROCESS that is archival.

Archival in dark storage. Not particularly archival if hung on a wall in the light.

[jnantz]

Archival in dark storage. Not particularly archival if hung on a wall in the light.

thanks kirk ...

i guess my uncle's successes were not typical ( or the changes were so gradual he didn't notice them ? )
.. the ones he showed me had been on his wall in ambient light for 30 years
he said it looked the same as the day he made it ... my-bad ( i thought his results were typical )

[Kirk Gittings]

Not my opinion-a known fact for a long time. Also when someone says after "30 years
he said it looked the same as the day he made it" well.............if after 30 years he compared it with an identical one that had been in dark storage for thirty years that statement would have some weight. The plain fact is that fading happens so slowly that we don't really notice it until it becomes pretty significant.

[Bill Burk]

How about taking an existing emulsion of film and coating with a stripping layer. Print that (in the dark of course) with an inkjet color pattern of filters. A stochastic/random pattern would be best. A different pattern for each pass would make it more beautiful and more difficult for someone to figure out your process by looking at several shots that you make this way.

Then strip the film, develop it and scan. And overlay the color pattern in the computer.

And with this method, I don't know why you would be restricted to a design of three "filters" Red-Green-Blue - you could scatter all variety of shades of color and then the reconstructed image would just need to be the complement of whatever colors you happened to use on the "filter".

[jnantz]

The plain fact is that fading happens so slowly that we don't really notice it until it becomes pretty significant.

i guess the trick is to make them and enjoy them
and not worry about the instability ... ?
i'm kind of wondering what the point is otherwise ...
maybe my uncle was really saying " see in ambient light, it might have faded
like all dye transfer prints do, but i don't really care, because it isn't too noticeable
and i am enjoying looking at it on my wall .. " but
i didn't really have a clue ( 21 years old and didn't even know what it was i was looking at
and the only thing i knew about it was that it took him a very long time effort and skill to make by comparison to
the handful of color prints we cranked out in his darkroom 20 minutes later )

i guess my point of bringing up dye transfer to begin with is
that "making autochromes" is still a mystery to most
making dye transfer prints is not..

[Drew Wiley]

"Archival" is an awfully plastic term. I make "Crystal Archive" prints because they are a good value, and should last longer on display than many other papers. But the
admitted fact that they might still yellow as much as .30 in fifty years or so simply due to residual couplers hardly makes them archival in any ultimate sense. I made
Cibachromes for several decades, and these are very stable in the dark; but sunlight or other UV sources will get to them faster than the CAII prints. So it all depends. The problem (as well as color reproduction advantage) with dye transfer prints is that different dyes could be chosen, and not all these are created equal. And again, UV is the obvious killer. But the same could be said for inkjet - all kinds of "inks" and printing substrates are available, and not everything will
be equal. Color shifts are inevitable over time. Even true pigment prints can fail. It's all relative. In fact, I can't think of any cadmium-free yellow pigment that
isn't fairly fugitive given enough UV exposure. If you want permanent pigments, think of the surface of Mars - all a bunch of oxides baked over the millennia. Same
reason fresco painters often worth with natural oxides and mineral colors that have already survived the ages. But these won't pass thru inkjet nozzles, and aren't
suitable for process colors at all. No free ride. You pick your battle.

[Fr. Mark]

I paint with cadmium colors. I think as long as you don't aerosolize them it should be safe to use them, though I'd avoid eating them. Even then, as the forms found in artist's oils, I don't think they are very bio-available. And, if working with dry pigment powders, a mask or fume hood to avoid inhalation should be fine. Some of the suggestions here sound a lot harder than learning to mix colors and painting on prints or using colored pencils to color photos, which is what the autochromes more/less look like to me. As has been mentioned several times, black, yellow, red, blue quad (or omit black and go for 3 color) separations are possible in hardening gelatin type printing and I'm not sure why the Cadmium colors would be unsuitable for that. Actually, I'd think that finding the right reds and blues would be harder than finding the right yellow which I'd think would be Cadmium Yellow Light in Gouache from M. Graham. Cd Red Lt might work but the blue...Ultramarine's too purple, perhaps Cobalt blue is in the center of things enough to work. These pigments have been on display as Monet era paintings for quite a while now, the oil as binder doesn't provide significant uv protection, I don't think they fade much in gallery spaces. The originals I've seen look pretty close to what I'd expect if I'd painted using the same colors as year ago. I don't know much about the technology of automotive paints, but that's come a long way in recent years---I suspect they put a UV absorbing agent in the clear coat, but I'm sure they use ton quantity of mineral and organic pigments every year---in fact, I think that and house paint is what really drives the pigment marketplace. We poor painters have to use the left-overs which, admittedly are pretty splendid. And, anyway, cars parked outdoors are a pretty harsh color fade test. I notice more deterioration of the lens for the headlights these days than I do the paint, even for colors that "ought" to fade (red, purple) I don't know if I will ever have the time/space/money/courage/patience to do multi-color carbon---I'm still trying to nail down Xray film with pyrocat hd (or rodinal) for Cyanotypes from a box in a box projector lens homebuilt leaky camera...