Abstract

The present invention provides a new process for the production of masked subtractive positive color images by the silver dye bleach process, which comprises the steps of exposure, silver developing, dye-bleaching, silver-bleaching and fixing. The photographic material used contains, in at least two layers, one image-wise bleachable dye per layer, the absorption maximum of the dye corresponding in each case to one of the three primary colors red, green and blue and a silver halide emulsion layer sensitive in a specific spectral region being allocated to each dye, wherein this material (a) in at least one layer contains a dye, the undesired secondary color density of which is to be compensated, and a silver halide emulsion containing silver iodide is allocated to this dye, in the same layer and/or an adjacent layer, (b) in at least one further layer contains at least one further dye, the main color density of which corresponds to a secondary color density, which is to be compensated, of the first dye, and also a silver halide emulsion free from iodide ions, (c) contains a further layer which is adjacent to layer (b) and contains colloidal nuclei which are able, under reducing conditions, to deposit metallic silver from soluble silver complexes, and also contains an insensitive iodide-free silver halide emulsion which is not spectrally sensitized, and optionally a stabilizer, and (d) containing a separating layer, which does not contain any of the dyes of the layer or layers (a), between the layer or layers (a) and the layer (c). The silver developing bath with which the material is treated contains ligands which form water-soluble and diffusible silver complexes with silver.