The use of dye imbibition for making full-color prints from a set of black-and-white photographs taken through different color filters was first proposed and patented by Charles Cros in 1880.
[1] It was commercialized by Edward Sanger-Shepherd, who in 1900 was marketing kits for making color prints on paper and slides for projection.
The colour process depends on superimposing three images in the subtractive colours: cyan, magenta and yellow in exact register, facilitated by means of register pins mounted at the edge of a glass rolling bed, using a purpose designed punch to make holes at the edge of the matrix films.
[2] In the 1940s, this process was popularized by the work of Jeannette Klute at Eastman Kodak for general-purpose graphic arts work, but not for motion picture work, which remained exclusive to Technicolor (and for which Eastman Kodak was manufacturing Technicolor's light-sensitive camera and printing films, including the "blank receiver" film, on an exclusive basis, but not Technicolor's dyes), and is sometimes referred to by such generic names as "wash-off relief printing" and "dye imbibition" printing.
Successive placement of the dyed film matrices, one at a time, "transfers" each primary dye by physical contact from the matrix to a mordanted, gelatin-coated paper.
The unsharp masks were made with an oblique light source (and a clear film as a spacer, the contact frame exposed while rotating on a gramophone turntable.
Three separation negatives were made on panchromatic film exposing the colour transparency through a red, green and blue filter that would eventually print in the subtractive dyes: cyan, magenta and yellow respectively.
Another important characteristic of dye transfer is that it allows the practitioner the highest degree of photographic control compared to any other photochemical color print process.
A peculiar advantage of the process was that skilled dye transfer retouchers would use the same dyes the image was printed with to fill in blank white spaces between two or three separate colour photographs such as a background shot (rocks and a waterfall) one or more human figures, and more often than not a product shot (a cigarette pack) to produce a "strip in".
Using the same dyes for photographically printing the images and for retouching meant that colour matching by eye would not show up differently when rephotographed.