<< Whoa. I don't know about the dye in the materials, but ALL color
PHOTOGRAPHIC materials are sensitive to RGB. >>
They are sensitive to RGB. Well, to be more accurate, they are sensitive to
almost all visible spectrum, but eventually and they are printed, they are
printed with CMY dyes.
I think the confusion is not with RGB, or CMY, or CMYK. These are just
terminologies. I could use a painters pallete and talk about Red, Yellow,
Blue where Red+Yellow = Orange, Yellow+Blue = Green, and Red+Blue = Violet.
And now you have a completely different set of terminologies. Now the
complement of Red is Green, the complement of Yellow is Violet, and the
complement of Blue is Orange.
Confusing? Not really. These are just different terms used to describe
colors. You will find people in different training used different terms to
describe hues. If you look at a painter's violet, you would call it
photographic blue; their blue, your cyan (close), their orange, your red,
etc. Conversely, they would call your (photographers') red red-orange; our
magenta, purple, etc. etc.
The main thing is that although different terms/names are used, the hues are
the same. In L*A*B model, the hues are called "A" and "B". As long as you
understand this, you will understand that ALL color models described the same
thing, theoretically.
Now the real confusion is not the confusion of color models. It is the
CONFUSION OF THEORETICAL MODEL AND REAL MODEL. Let me explain more: In
theoretical sense, the RGB model is exactly the same as the CMY model (or
more accurately, they are the duality of each other). Whether you like to use
RGB or CMY, that's your preference, but in theory, they describe the same
color space.
So if any software has RGB model, it doesn't really need a CMY model.
The problem is that we do not have perfect cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes. So
yellow+mag doesn't give you true red. In fact, cyan + mag will give you
yellowish red. So while in theoretical CMY model, cyan+mag should give you
red, we need another practical model that translated properly so that cyan +
mag will give you red + small amount yellow. And combining all the effect of
impurities of C and M (Y is close to perfect), we need to have a CMYK model.
Please remember this: RGB is a theoretical model (at least very close), but
CMYK is a practical/real model. You will find that many, many articles in
magazines do not correctly treat this. If you do research by reading only,
you will find it confusing because most written articles talks about CMYK in
printing, so it is not directly applicable to photography where only CMY is
used.
For slides, CMY dyes are used; but slides are projected, and in transmitted
light, it is easier to use the CMY dye to generate almost perfect RGB, so in
general, slides do not give much problem.
With prints, however, things are different. Photographic prints are also made
with CMY dyes, and these dyes are not perfect either, so correction must be
made, and the correction is made through integral masking (the orange look of
your negative). Just like printers used standard C, M, Y, and K inks,
photogrpahic paper used standard CMY dyes.
With alt. processes, things get even more complicated. Since everybody uses
different CMY, you will have to understand how the impurities can be
corrected before you can actually correct them. It is impossible for me to
describe them in full here. I wish I could, but sorry, it's really quite
involved, as you can see that this piece already gets this long when I have
only described the basic and theoretical part of it.
As I am typing this, I remind myself that I should probably spend more of my
time finishing my writing and somehow get them published, that way it will be
clearer than my typing-as-I think, like now. Oh well, if you do have specific
question, just ask and I will try to answer, maybe briefly. :)
David Soemarko
P.S. I noticed that we have several Davids online who writes actively, so if
you do quote or mention names, please use at least David F, David B, David S.
etc. Thanks. :)