Using pre-tinted positive film on which to make the print.

The inconsistency of the tinting, the technical difficulties that it posed for the labs, and the unpredictability of a toned image on an emulsion which had already been tinted [and vice versa], lead the main film manufacturers to introduce raw stock coated onto film base that had already been tinted. This didn't create any printing problems (the printing light doesn't pass through the raw stock base) and permitted a much more stable tinting that resisted better the heat of the projector lamp as well.

Most, if not all film manufacturers offered some black and white print film on tinted base support as early as 1915. Nine colours were offered in 1910 by Eastman Kodak [called red, pink, orange, amber, light amber, yellow, green, blue and lavender].

As optical sound arrived in 1929, it was realised that sound prints could not use some of these dyes without a high amplification of the signal from the sound photocell and that this would result in a poor quality especially at the high sound levels in cinemas. Eastman Kodak introduced a new range of coloured bases in 1929 as a series of print films called Eastman Sonochrome Tinted Positive Films especially for sound films. The names of the colours followed the pattern used by other manufacturers, suggesting the purpose of each colour and adopting the rather high-flown language of symbolism common to the cinema at the time.

Eastman Kodak, Kodak Ltd, Agfa, Gevaert and Pathe offered such a wide selection of coloured bases in the 1920's that the market was saturated to the extent that at one time coloured print film stocks were sold at the same price as black and white! It's only disadvantage was that, since credits were generally shot directly and displayed as a negative [i.e. not printed from a negative], and the contrast needed to be as high as possible, they couldn't be shot on a coloured base film. The camera exposure of titles was generally through the film base (to get readable writing it was necessary to load the film back to front in the camera). For this reason some well-coloured films have credits that are in black and white at this period, whereas previously the titles were dyed in a dye bath along with the picture.

Tinted films are often dark with between 25 and 95% of the projection light absorbed by the dyes, however recently some of the prints that were previously thought to have faded to very pale tints are now considered to have been only delicately tinted to begin with. Tinted prints can be rather difficult to watch as the eye becomes fatigued to being exposed to one colour for a long time, an effect known as general colour fatigue, caused by fatigue to individual colour receptors in the eye. In time, sometimes only a few minutes, the eye accommodates to compensate for the dominant colour and if the colour is relatively weak, after a while, the colour is not noticed. This was probably recognised by early filmmakers using tinted films as strong colours are often used for long scenes, whereas weak colours are sometimes frequently changed.

In the early 1930’s, tinted films disappeared over a very short period. Sound was not in itself the cause but the printing systems developed for optical sound prints meant that films were generally printed in one pass through the printer and no longer needed positive joins. Specialised duplicating stocks were introduced in the 1930's and these helped to overcome the problems of making large numbers of release prints from one original negative.

From 1930 to 1936 black and white reigned supreme and only in a few countries did colour make the occasional appearance prior to Technicolor imbibition prints

This disappearance of coloured films over quite a short period seems difficult to explain. There seem to be no technical reasons why coloured films could not continue to be made; neither the new sound technology nor the advent of specially made duplicating stocks meant that colour was no longer possible. If colour was still needed it could have been continued. The new Sonochrome print stock, released on the US market in 1929 to make colour prints with optical sound, was withdrawn within two years.

Perhaps the viewing public no longer accepted these often-unrealistic images.

In order to distinguish tinted from toned films view the white parts that with tinting (which colours the entire film) become coloured too. With simple toning, the area outside the picture remains completely white, although this is not so well defined with mordant toned film in which the highlights and edges are often coloured or stained [see Toning below]. Tinting always colours the perforated edge of the film as well [except in the case of Agfa’s lacquering method]. Tinting of the emulsion can be identified by scratching the edge of the image on the emulsion side; if the colour comes away, it is the emulsion that has been coloured not the base [or the base lacquered].