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The Color Photographer:
Using Ektacolor film, announced by the Eastman Kodak Company in 1947, the photographer can process his own color negatives. An important feature of this color process is the incorporation into the film of a mask that automatically compensates for inaccuracies in color rendition. Theoretically it should be possible to choose dyes that will completely absorb each of the primary colors. In practice this cannot be done. To correct these errors, the dye couplers added to the emulsion are themselves colored, absorbing the very rays that are incorrectly absorbed by the dyes.One obviously excellent use for Flexichrome is in the production of expensive color portraits. The Flexichrome process has the advantage that it permits the photographer to make a number of black and white exposures in the ordinary manner and at the ordinary film cost, then have the selected negative carefully retouched before the print is made, resulting in a much more flattering picture than a straight portrait shot on regular color transparency film. Ordinarily, color retouching by any of the other processes can be done only by an expert and at great cost.
The color photographer is faced with many aesthetic ptoUenfi.lYie dye does not see color the way the Camera does. Should he choose the naturalistic approach and, as P. H. Emerson did in black and white, limit himself to producing what the eye sees? Or should he follow the camera's lead, exploiting its potentials and respecting its limits? There seem to be colors that exist only in photographs: Kodachrome film, for example, gives blue of a richness and depth that can validly be used for its own sake with no attempt at realism.
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