Category: dye transfer

Everyone loves a secret

Posted on Posted in da net, dye transfer, overnight notes, the fora

They dilute their experience with delay — lots of delay. I love a mystery. Dye Transfer printing was never a secret. Just because you didn’t know, maybe weren’t curious during the age of full supply and support, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Is it better thinking a conspiracy kept you from learning dye transfer, than that you were lazy. How is that you are able to lecture the gathering about the insides of the process? An unlived life, so fully formed.

Some secrets are a fantasy of the person keeping themself ignorant… printing is an experience augmented by theory, not theory spiced with a bit of experience. Don’t read the bathroom wall.

Frog Prince manual: go ahead read it. You will learn a bit about “traffic” of a small commercial lab. Notice that much of the reference matters aren’t included — they are on the wall of the lab. That’s where I’d expect them to be. Mikey’s excitement is that he found a manual from a lab. In 1990, he could have had lab books by the box load. He still wouldn’t have made a print. Kissing toads isn’t the secret to knowledge.

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/making-commercial-color-separation-negatives-of-transparencies-for-the-kodak-dye-transfer-process.212574/

Arrogance, particularly absolute arrogance, is a rotten board in the ladder to knowledge. I was tempted to create a login and respond. Nope… this is good enough. Keep it local.

Would you join the board to inform, perhaps hoping to correct? Don’t. They will not appreciate, nor use. M. Gareleick has been under the belief that there exists a secret book, a fountainhead of all knowledge. That lacking this knowledge has kept him from making dye transfers– For some reason Kodak, and the Kabahl of commercial labs maintained these secrets to dominate the marketplace. I suppose this was meant to keep weekenders obliged to order prints from one of the Super Labs.

Ever wonder about all those dye transfer workshops held — passing out worksheets, booklets, quarterly newsletter subscriptions. It is 1980, you could learn to make matrix film… even how to use other sheet film in place of Kodak Matrix film… even for collotype.

Complicating the conspiracy: they shared it among themselves -(and)- they kept it from each other — they used it to make — better (and) worse prints than those who didn’t learn from the exclusive meeting room at Kodak Park. To get in, you had to ask. Most classes were never full.

Reads like the “worst of times, best of times…” of conspiracy novels.

I don’t believe they want to learn Dye Transfer. They want to explain why they failed to learn Dye Transfer when it was a Kodak product.

Along with the “secret knowldge” is the foundation of enlightenment…

a sidebar on inspired knowledge

The better (only) way of growing a small group is in a closed table. Open the gathering to those capable of adding more than they subtract, otherwise intensity is lost.

CVI. Notes

Posted on Posted in dye transfer, labnotes, the Lab

It was called Dye Transfer, because the dye transfers (from Mat to Blank). Often, the name is the answer. Rollup is the step with results you see. The assembly is a mechanical stage, the hand stage of the process. While making a masks, separtions cannot be sloppy, they can be made a by-the-numbers procedure. Each stage multiple changes can be made. This was intimidating and exciting. Most found it too much to venture into. Lacking confidence is worse than lacking knowledge.

The show, as I review it, consists of three sections. These are: immersion and mounting the original, exposure steps, briefly covered, the camera moves over a couple important pieces of exposing equipment from the past; without prior knowledge, they are probably not noticed.

Note: they have a KM tri-level and a filtermatic. FM introduced 1961ish. K&M was across the bay from CCA, Tampa.


Irene Malli born 1964, and Guy Stricherz (b. 1948 – d. March 29, 2025 ) 

The mask is used during exposure of the separation, or the mask is used while exposing the separation to the mat. A mask+sep sandwich. This was occasioned when an original was small, restricting the binding of the mask and original before separating. Masks are, essentially, automatic dodging — most labs, and all published instruction I have found on the internet, rely upon “silver” masks, that is, colorless, neutral masks. They are most often made to filtered light, so they select the image color range you choose to control.

[Only those people of Blue Pizza, have been instructed about making non-silver masks.]

The portion of the video I would emphasize watching is the rollup segments. This comes at the 13min point. This is a key to master skill of dye printer. The prior stages are following instructions, rollup is experience based. Irene shows process mastery.

— laydown, position, clearing the blank … watch roller clearing, use. Notice gloves on, off sections. Watch it again… Wiping is an essential skill… how she lifts (corners).. we aren’t shown the pickup (probably with a scrap of mat, what I use.) She cleans the SLAB without gloves, preventing stained surface.

If there is a secret, it is their transfer times: (these aren’t secrets, times are within range of anyone else’s.)

  • Magenta transfer time is 8 mins
  • Cyan transfer time is 6 mins
  • Yellow transfer time is 3 mins


Pre-maskers baked the scale into the sep, so the mat stage was more automatic.This prebake allowed easier making of multiple mats. Most labs never needed many sets of mats, since a well managed rollup method allowed making many (50) prints. There were few labs that had to make more than 50 prints in an order cycle. (only three that I knew)

worlds ago… there was Phoho … Soho.. and the Dye Road. most of the dye labs were near Germain. I was.

[this is a current screen off goog maps. the end point addresses are FTL and CVI

Frank Tartaro taught at Germain, the basecamp, jump off point for many of the better dye transfer printers.

The New York days: (CVI, 23 Prince St. NYC NY 10012 // 212-226-3399). Some of the other labs: Frank Tartaro, Frenchy’s. Someone who made extremely complex dye-rollups was Nino Mondhe  (Buttenhoff 2 Wakendorfii Germany 011-49-4535-6867); Chicago dye was Edward Van Baerle.

Reminder: These ref values are for Kodak Products. Not Efke. Not OIC.