What was the name of the printing process for turning Kodachrome slides into prints? There was a more expensive process than the regular color print that yielded super saturated colors and near 3D quality immages, but I can't remember what it was called.

Cibachrome printing (aka Ilfochrome) was used to print color slides (positives) onto photographic paper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilfochrome
It was a demanding process, but produced oh so beautiful prints when done correctly. I miss it.

I don't know about 3D-like, but Cibachrome was certainly a very vivid printing process. It also had the advantage, like Kodachrome film itself, of being much more stable and archival than other color photographic printing processes.

Some of what Cibachrome prints looked like was due to what Kodachrome looked like. Kodachrome was very saturated, emphasized reds in certain ways, and also had very fine sharpness.

It wasn't that the other processes were inferior, and very beautiful images could be made with them, but Cibachrome prints from Kodachrome were distinctive.

Thanks for the info.

Possibly you are recalling the 'Dye Transfer' print process. It essentially copies the image from a Kodachrome slide onto a sheet of similar film that is the size of the paper print to be made and then the dyes are physically transferred, layer by layer, from the large sheet of film and deposited onto the sheet of paper. In the 1970's a large dye transfer print cost around $75(11x17?) whereas a Ciba could be had for around $10 IIRC. The process was/is very labor intensive and technically difficult.

The Playboy magazine used such prints exclusively for evaluating their centerfold choices up to the final printing of the magazine. Such prints were still available a few years back from some very pricey custom shops. Kodak had a traveling roadshow of such prints that was stunning which I saw circa 1960.

I agree that Cibachrome printing was lovely as I came very close to setting up my lab with that tech. However I seem to recall that it didn't succeed financially and that its parent company abandoned it fairly soon(a few years?) after bringing it to the market.

quote:

Originally posted by Orthogonal:
Possibly you are recalling the 'Dye Transfer' print process. It essentially copies the image from a Kodachrome slide onto a sheet of similar film that is the size of the paper print to be made and then the dyes are physically transferred, layer by layer, from the large sheet of film and deposited onto the sheet of paper. In the 1970's a large dye transfer print cost around $75(11x17?) whereas a Ciba could be had for around $10 IIRC. The process was/is very labor intensive and technically difficult.

The Playboy magazine used such prints exclusively for evaluating their centerfold choices up to the final printing of the magazine. Such prints were still available a few years back from some very pricey custom shops. Kodak had a traveling roadshow of such prints that was stunning which I saw circa 1960.

I agree that Cibachrome printing was lovely as I came very close to setting up my lab with that tech. However I seem to recall that it didn't succeed financially and that its parent company abandoned it fairly soon(a few years?) after bringing it to the market.

Cibachrome is the process I was trying to renember. It was commercially available ftom about 1970 until around 2010.

The non Ciba, Kodak process, was called type R prints.

Most all pro commercial photographers shot transparency film exclusively. Retouching was usually done on a "dupe" transparency of the original. Sometimes a dye transfer would be ordered for retouching, the cost of dye transfer prints was VERY expensive but the quality was superb.
I used to work on Cigarette ads for Brown and Williamson through there Ad agency. Money was NO object!
Every print ordered by the agency for review with the client would be a dye transfer.
For working prints a type R or a Cibachrome would be used. The Ciba prints were in most cases very nice but very contrasty and overly vivid, they also required different dyes to be used for retouching.They had a much better resistance to fading over time. Type R prints were less expensive and more accurate in there colors and contrast.
Back in the day Ad Agencys used art studios to comp up the ads, they had MASTERS working at those studios that did re-touching, these retouchers were infamous for there ability and very sought after. Illustrators were also on staff, there work was stunning, true artists.
NOW the "magic "is gone. All done electronically on a keyboard.