I did dye transfer printing way back when as it was the final "official" class during my college photo classes. It was offered in the catalog and the lab had the equipment. But the instructors never did it nor do I think anyone had done it there since some of the equipment and all the supplies were still boxed.
It was one step below the ultimate color reproduction of the day which was pigment printing and an entirely more complex printing method than dye transfer.
I pretty much had to learn the process solo as I was the only one enrolled. When I completed the class, I did more during the following summer and that inspired a couple of other people to take the class and my next class was to teach the two students what I learned the previous terms.
One of my mentors slipped me the Brooks Institute manuals and another, Phil Hyde, answered a lot of my questions as I started my journey into the process.
Petersen's Photographic was nearly as big as Pop Photo & Modern Photo then and Ctein was writing a series of articles on how to do the process, so I picked up even more tips.
I learned a lot on color printing, chemistry, densitometry, and more during a year of the process. But I really wanted to go out and shoot, rather than spend days in the lab to print each image. I ended up going into Cibachrome and I was much more happy!
I still have a few of my surviving DT prints in my archives.
Years later, I met Charles Cramer at a photo symposium I once helped to produce. He, too, had been a dye transfer printer then evolved into Cibachrome. Out meeting was maybe 20 years ago and he had just made the leap to shooting digital images after years of scanning film and printing pigment prints, much like I had. I already had a few years under my belt with digital capture and printing by then.
That education was priceless! I learned that for me to survive, I couldn't live on such a tedious process that would yield few images overall.
What took me weeks to print with the control one had with dye transfer today takes just a few minutes to prepare and minutes to print at any size, rather than one set of matrixes for each and every size of print taking a tremendous investment of time, energy and resources to make every print.
Dye transfer prints was the ultimate process during much of the 20th century but it pales to the potential we have with today's tools and techniques.
I admire the tenacity of those who kept the process going but glad I learned the process and continue to evolve as things change.
