Dye Transfer Fantasy

Products fail by being used as merit badges, marks of distinction, instead of making art. With the online photoworld, it is enough to say you do, then hide behind a ready alibi. “You can’t see it on the web, it is too analog perfect to be digitized.” They abhor “art-speak” as they engage, mostly in “craft-speak.”

Parrots don’t print. They hate artspeak. They love craftspeak

The market for dye transfer Materials is nonexistent . it is a fantasy . they transfer materials must be made for someone who is using them intently consistently . The firms which can coat Silver sensitive Materials are reducing their small capacity or closing it completely . In 2010 there were several times more coaters than are available now . In the US, of the three firms that could’ve coded Silver sensitive emulsion, two have left that market . Both of those locations coat emulsions for dry lab photography .

For most of the 21st century dye transfer has existed as a small scale competitive conversation transacted online . very little of the discussion has involved experience based opinion .

 Why didn’t another able coater supply a version of matrix film to the still hungry marketplace after FK’s collapse? Certainly there were coaters with excess capacity along with the ability to formulate their version of the open source Browning/formulation. Even the clamor among the alt-print world for silver solutions to the “make it bigger” topic will not support a lab film. Digital negs rule, even among the darkroom adherents. Oddly, even after many complain about the inferior negatives produced using inkjet / overhead film workflow.

The question ONEIDA posed was about markets for a product once made. If a film sells, others will fill the orders.

EFKE (FK) wasn’t profitable. They couldn’t sell enough film. Matrix film was a risk that failed as revenue.

Bergger Printfilm was a toll coating based upon Efke Printfilm. It was designed, and released to satisfy the ALT photography printmakers searching for solutions to making enlarged negatives for UV sensitive contact processes.

Like AI’s arrogant children, they ignore the question in order to make a point: they know better, not just more, but more as well as better. They don’t need to read the question. Easy as Pie.

Time spent to learn:

Mr. Answerman has accumulated over two years talking about color photography, using as his merit badge knowledge of dye-transfer. This time is if he spends only 5 minutes reading and posting on each of his posts across three frequented forums. Two years is more than enough to master the process. More time than even the name-dropped heros spent.

NB: the durable dye-transfer groups — nope!


  • key patent by Wey and Whiteley.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debye–Hückel_theory
  • Russell, Chemical Analysis in Photography
  • Croome, Photographic Gelatin
  • Deryagin, Film Coating Theory
  • Zelikman, Making & Coating Photographic Emulsion
  • Gorokhseskii, Spectral Studies of the Photographic Process
  • Duffin, Photographic Emulsion Cheistry

This isn’t tuesday– suppose you were learning a subject that had deep, long-time history, would you start at the end? Which end? This from the early part, that which made the thing possible was a set of references, most of which are lost on the shelves of unvisited libraries. Nonetheless, here, 1945, photochemistry sources used by the original makers of color systems:

let’s make some ..

after the posting, the investing. after gossip is…

after barbs come barbed wire.

America knows how to make a war. You need war we’ve got it

On the spectrum… the silicon rainbow includes all the shades of greed.

getting beyond making conversation .. Ideas start between mind and paper, frequently involving walks

wealth comes from wealth . pandemics come from arrogance … The arrogant believing they were smarter than they are .. pandemics feed on the ignorance … the tax dodging wealth didn’t solve Covid … it wasn’t capital, it was the resources of labor, the pool of investment money that comes from labor .The tax of the middle class kept democratic science alive, and willing to distribute knowledge without requirement for profit, return on investment …


Capital [ kodak Who for refresher]–claim of the … no skin in the game [chuckup]

… labor is the only skin in the game … it is their skin, and sweat in the shop.

The chuks can’t see The facts before them. the facts found reading with open, accepting eyes. Instead they see it through their bias; turning the (mis)reading into evidence of your failure; their correctness… The mark of capital.. of prejudice of scale, and bias that their experience has always been more valuable than anyone else’s… their grand summaries of business, of their experience, reveal their prejudice, and their miss-judgments.
These factors explain why they wind up at this point-place. Why they’re changed, grown by small amounts: they follow strawmen to a dead end.. their consulting, hopefully, was about buying routers, not about business routes, business plans.. their sample examples aren’t even theirs; couldn’t have been from their experience, instead coming from their superficial readings of  years ago; from a time when they were 30.

 awareness becomes illusion… more so when you’re trying to convince someone else you’re attempting to gain control of a group you exert added claim to overcome them.

as your knowledge thins out your reinforce it with repetition with pronouncements with exaggerations of experience even going far enough to claim other persons experience as your own…

you feed the Warhorse on strawmen.

after everyone has given an opinion on the headline, perhaps it’s time to read the story; review the facts, consider opposite interpretation… Consider not hanging the messenger for your myopia.

people pick one word and expand upon it particularly if that word is a person .. someone they dislike more likely a symbol of their dislike.

as likely. topics become entry analogues for the person’s monologue.