Common Tints
Over the years, general rules of thumb were developed for what color to use in certain scenes. Many of them were obvious, but a few artistic. Specific names were given to tints to specify certain colors. Striking effects could be achieved by both tinting and toning sequences.
In order of most common:
- Amber Tint (variations: straw amber, light amber, night amber) - used for daylight interiors. Night amber was sometimes used for exterior night scenes that were lit. Orange was common for night time interiors
- Yellow Tint (aka: Sunshine) - Used for daylight exteriors exclusively.
- Blue Tint (variations: Azure, Nocturne) - For night scenes that had no visible light source other than the moon. Blue tone (processed in Ferric ferrocyanide solution) was also somewhat common and usually an amber tint were used for scenes well lit by lamps, candles, etc.
- Sepia tone - Processed through a silver sulfide ferrocyanide or uranium ferrocyanide solution. Popular as an alternative to Sunshine or Amber. Was very popular in westerns and other pictures of the 1930s through the 1950s because of the dusty tone it gave and technically for its low interference rate on the soundtrack.
- Red Tint (variations: Scarlet, Inferno, Firelight) - Used for scenes of fire, fury or explosion. Firelight was a light orange/yellow that was used with red tone to create realistic flames. Red tone was created by processing through a copper ferrocyanide solution.
- Lavender Tint (variations: Purple Haze, Fleur de Lis) - Used in romantic, dusk or dawn, or oriental scenes primarily. Lavender tint was also used as a processing technique to cut down on contrast with duplicate negatives before fine grain positives were popular.
- Rose (variations: Rose Doreé, Peachblow, Candleflame) - Similar to lavender, sometimes used for low-key lit night interiors.
- Green Tint (variations: Verdante, Aqua Green) - Scenes tinted in green were generally mysterious or seafaring scenes. Green tone, achieved by processing through vanadium ferrocyanide solution, was commonly used in jungle and nature scenes.
Read more about this topic: Film Tinting
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