Dye destruction or dye bleach is a photographic printing process, in which dyes embedded in the paper are bleached (destroyed) in processing. Because the dyes are fully formed in the paper prior to processing, they may be formulated with few constraints, compared with the complex dye couplers that must react in chromogenic processing. This has allowed the use of richly colored, highly stable dyes. It is a reversal process, meaning that it is used in printing transparencies (diapositives).
Ilfochrome (originally Cibachrome) is currently the only widely available dye destruction process, and is known for its intense colors and archival qualities. Older dye destruction processes included Utocolor (early 1900s) and Gasparcolor (1930s).
Famous quotes containing the words dye and/or destruction:
“It will help me nothing
To plead mine innocence, for that dye is on me
Which makes my whit’st part black.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)