Understanding colors of Dufaycolor: Can we recover them using historical colorimetric and spectral data?

TL;DR

This paper explores reconstructing original colors of Dufaycolor photographs using historical spectral data and introduces an open-source tool for accurate color recovery of vintage additive color images.

Contribution

It presents a novel method combining historical dye measurements with spectral data to accurately recover colors in Dufaycolor photographs, supported by an open-source tool.

Findings

Successful color reconstruction of Dufaycolor images

Integration of historical dye data improves accuracy

Open-source tool facilitates reproducibility

Abstract

Dufaycolor, an additive color photography process produced from 1935 to the late 1950s, represents one of the most advanced iterations of this technique. This paper presents ongoing research and development of an open-source Color-Screen tool designed to reconstruct the original colors of additive color photographs. We discuss the incorporation of historical measurements of dyes used in the production of the color-screen filter (r\'eseau) to achieve accurate color recovery.