Diffusion transfer printing is a generic name for the chemical photographic process developed and popularized by Edwin Land’s Polaroid company in the 1940’s and 1950’s to produce what he called “one-step” black and white prints. Prints that were good to go almost as soon as they could be removed from the camera with no need for processing or darkrooms.
The process of diffusion transfer printing was invented in the 1930’s in Germany and aside from Polaroid, the same basic chemistry was used for a long period as a method of copying office documents, prior to the introduction of Xerography.
A vast library of patents and other open-source literature remains from the 1940’s onward describing the basic processes and many enhancements that were made by Polaroid, Kodak, Fuji and others for the purposes of instant imaging. In 2023 I thought it would be an interesting project to see if a process could be developed using this information and along the same lines that would allow hobby photographers to produce instant photographs for themselves.
This website describes the results.
What I have discovered, or re-discovered, or researched, or redeveloped (I don’t think a single verb exists to describe the process) is a thoughtful mashup of ideas from hundreds of patents, books, scientific publications and other websites that meets the goal I set. At some point I will add a bibliography for interested readers to follow some of the more relevant sources.
To describe the process briefly:
A large-format negative is taken from the camera and superposed on an image receptive sheet, on which a developer chemical mixture has been placed in a bead. The whole thing is sandwiched in a plastic pouch and rolled through a machine (a repurposed office laminator). Then the negative is peeled off the receiver sheet leaving behind a good dry positive print of the image.
On the subsequent pages I describe how to prepare the receiver paper and developer mixture. I have some sample videos of the process and show some sample images.