AI. seeking dye transfer

How much can you learn about dye transfer, imbibition printing, from LLM chatBOTs?
Where did they learn; what was their source materials? What did the trainers know?

NB: know more than goog: https://filmcolors.org/

February of ’25 I casually looked into AI. It began with Google’s search using the unfettered search; then the search repeated using the -ai command.
Both forms failed to provide clear, correct answers to foundation questions about the process. I didn’t get to a point of asking specifics, detailed questions suited for estimating the practical knowledge-base of the agents. The failure of high-level information would have bounced an applicant. No need to send them to the lab for a skill test. They couldn’t sell the product to a knowing professional never mind using the process in a commercial lab.

These results were further support for my 20 year aged aphorism: what google knows but doesn’t understand.

What does AI know; how accurate are zer answers. The big, almost dangerous answers concern matrix management procedures. Zer (genderless pronoun) can’t correctly answer what the different chemical effects on matrix emulsion occur due to tanning developer or tanning bleach. Likely because Zer uses the forum answers provided by a single under experienced source.

I dug much deeper into AI, models, companies, key authors, last fall thru now. My consistent markers have remained asking the model to tell me something I already knew, and knew deeply through experience gained in using the materials along with a rich, deep reference library consisting of research papers, consumer articles, trade-show items along with trade journals. This material set includes patents and private kettle books from researchers who worked from the 40s into the 1980s.
I do not expect a text-trained model to know about unpublished materials, however, it seems reasonable to expect it to be competent at summarizing materials available on the internet.

The following AI answers were wrong.

Q1 response :Both Q-7A and Q-7B are integral tripack films, meaning they contain multiple emulsion layers that can be processed in standard developing systems.

  • Color Reproduction: These films utilize dye-coupling development, which creates colored images through a process involving a developing agent and color-forming couplers. This ensures vibrant and accurate color representation.

Q2 response — The Kodak dye transfer process, also known as the dye-bleach or dye destruction process, was a photographic printing process that used a combination of dyes to create a color image. Here are the core takeaways:

Question 3: The difference between tanning developers and tanning bleaches as used by dye transfer printers.

Q3 response – Thank you for the clarification! You’re asking about matrix preparation in imbibition printing (also called dye transfer or carbro printing), which is a specialized photographic process. follow up: references needed for your conclusion re bleaching as offering greater control

Claude Haiku 4.5: You’ve caught me making an unsupported claim, and I appreciate the push for accuracy. I stated that the bleach method offers “greater flexibility in adjusting relief depth and dye transfer characteristics” without having a reliable source to back that up.

I should not have presented that as fact without evidence. The truth is, my training data on imbibition printing and matrix preparation is limited, and I’m not confident enough in the comparative advantages I described to cite them as conclusions.

To give you a properly sourced answer, I would need to search for technical literature on imbibition printing methods. However, this is quite specialized historical photographic process material, and I’m uncertain whether a web search would surface reliable technical references.


It would be possible to build a well-formed, accurate aid; I don’t know why. At this stage, at my interest level it distracts from my ongoing interests in image making. In furthering my life goals. My time teaching has resulted in several new dye printers, the OIC. They have achieved self sufficiency, down to sourcing matrix materials.


RAG: Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is a technique that enables large language models (LLMs) to retrieve and incorporate new information from external data sources. With RAG, LLMs first refer to a specified set of documents, then respond to user queries. These documents supplement information from the LLM’s pre-existing training data.

Or, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.20088

Block notes:

  • Llama -> meta:Facebook, Instagram
  • Gemini -> alphabet:Google — Reddit slurped
  • Grok -> xAI: X, ne Twitter
  • GPT -> openAI
  • Claude -> anthropic

Prior seekings: poisoning ,, making magenta

link for joy: https://susam.net/wander/ ai positive

NB: it is likely that I will return to this topic. My several months of interactions with different engines has provided me many pages of logs. The incentive to expend the clarification, corrections remains a quagmire… the very reason I avoid the forums — the endless September.

Continue reading “AI. seeking dye transfer”

pyro whores

the page2 of glycin-gone

every war has a whore patch. The bleachers, the sidelines — those who can’t do, cheer, claim, proclaim. With nothing but hearsay, they say much. They are without nous.

so what . so what’s the difference . so what’s it to me ? The chatter clique dilutes the craft; frequently out of fear of losing standing, even though the standing is among the multitude of casual crafters as intent on social gossip as they are in advancing their skills. They replacing experience with gossip. These back-benchers share another common habit – they dislike “art-speak” — even as they fail to grasp the disdain of their “snobby-hobby” formulas.

Tanning developers longest use was in dye-transfer (imbibition) printing. There are many posts on this topic on webionaire.

PMK supply is in decline, as is most of the chemical based photographic world. The on-again, off-again extremes of demand make reasoning about making chems for general consumption a risk. Prepared chems are profitable, but not risk-less. Researchers have little opportunity to recover from a single failure, which is likely why they supply standard solutions. Deeper budgets have already explored those hills. Maps of success are available at the counter.

A moersch product I’ve used within the past year. (2025). Note how long the developer last during development

venom, vengeance among the Camp followers. craft culture Delayed until vacation or retirement. A Hobby to fill time … Sharpening pencils hoping someday you’ll have something to write .

[ Parkinson’s Law of Triviality – which states that, “The time spent on any item of an agenda is in inverse proportion to the sum involved,” with a local example where it took the Singapore City Council “six hours to pick a new man for the gasworks and two and a half minutes to approve a $100 million budget ]

quickstep across

— Although The video is not mine... it is worth my time, perhaps yours also. What does it consider?

YouTube (YT) is a key supplier of opinions. It is the Hot Media. It is widely dispersed, with sense, nonsense. Its basis is advertising, so like water in a desert it may nourish, it may also poison. YT channels stratify the field. Entry layers gaining greater advertising hits. This is like the threaded online boards, except they are in decline, with YT continuous increasing attention. Even in the time after TikTok and pulse viewing.

I wouldn’t link to a poison. I don’t know this person, not even his work, other than what is shown in the video. His imagery isn’t my reason for directing you to his video.

one video about roadtrip… my response after the video. My response is here, rather than on YT, so I can better remember my shorthand. YT responses are better for a short statement sent into the bucket. Please watch the YT version.

The nature of film is the image is not seen immediately. Polaroid was in every commercial studio as part of the solution to this boundary. Polaroid along with messenger service and a quick turn lab within a few blocks was the method of New York photography. Why we dominated. We had the community, the infrastructure nourished its own. Manhattan was home to Madison Avenue, the source of work and seemingly unlimited funds to maintain this intense group of photographers.

selected transcript from the video.
  • Travel with chemicals -[else] keep them concentrated. Process one-shot.
  • Pickup distilled water at gas/rest stops. Also, ice for temperature control of process.
  • learned to stay, shoot enough to “distil” the composition.

This equipment he takes surprises me: a scanner. His reasoning is to verify that his camera and process are producing useful results. This is a hybrid thinking solution. I carry duplicate cameras. For bellows based cameras, carry electrical tape, or “bellows” patch (scuba glue).

I suspect he is now a digital first photographer, since it seems he was using film as input to scanner. He liked the camera, had fun with film. So it goes.


Travel opens the world. The road trip is a standard of photographers. Even studio photographers make road trips (Avedon) , just rarely is that considered their prime work.

–> other bit about travel to tripod spots.