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.

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…

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.