Film Term:

A technique used much more by still photographers. Cross processing is the use of color reversal film stock to be developed as a negative. A positive print struck from that negative will have strange and rich colors, intense contrast and on overall yellowish hue.

Glossary of Film Terms - http://homepage.newschool.edu/~schlemoj/film_courses/glossary_of_film_terms/
reprinted with permission

Cross Processing in still photography - shooting with E6 (slide) film and then processing as C41 (negative) film - can produce alot of wonderfully interesting effects.

Like Yossarian describes, the negative will have intense contrast. So much so, in fact, that it is not good for the fine detail of a person's expression unless the blown out highly contrasty and grainy look is a part of your desired result. It is, however, unbelievably beautiful to cross process images showing hard and varied textures, or anything else you'd like to see starkly portrayed. Even nature images look amazing and different, although somewhat surreal, using this technique.

Your negs will not always have an overly yellowish hue; different slide films have different effects when cross processed and experimentation is recommended. The colors may range from normal to somewhat strange to completely off the wall, and are almost always overly rich and vibrant. This can help with subtle things like pulling a brilliant blue sky out on a bland gray day, or achieving magic hour shadows in a drably lit situation. Much more fun, though, are the amazing and powerful artsy effects you can get with the overly-brilliant colors produced.

Kodachome and Ectachrome, when cross processed, do lean towards rich and warmer yellows while Fuji slide films (like the cheap and readily available Velvia for instance) can bring piercing greens and blues. The contrast across the board is always extra intense.

And yes, cross processing is also often used in moving picture environments. You can see its effects all over the place, from some of the overly-attempting-to-be-gritty-and-urban commercials on MTV these days, to the occasional hollywood usage (the yellowed and strangely stark Mexico scenes in Traffic can be attributed to this technique, as can those purposeful blown-out colorful scenes appearing in almost all Spike Lee flicks.)


Cross Processing is also a term used to describe combining multiple techniques for direct positive-to-paper experimental photographic imaging. For instance, slathering a canvas with brownprint (a photographic emulsion that can be applied to almost any dry, natural surface) and shining light through a lith film positive directly onto the surface to create a negative image is called cross processing.

Cross processing is (usually) processing E6 slide films in a C-41 color negative process.

This results in some spectacular effects, for one thing, this produces an unmasked negative (unmasked: no orange mask). This results in some very strong colors, compared to regular developing.

Cross processing can be done by just dropping the slide films in the C41 machine (this will damage the chemicals for the C41 process, so make sure you do cross processing as the last batch before changing to fresh chemistry)

Some tips if you want to try cross-processing, and really make the pictures stand out.. This is one of the best ways to do the cross processing technique "by hand"

• Process the transparency film in a monochrome developer, and push-process it
• Bleach this in a Ferricyanide bleach
• Process through standard C41 chemicals.

Films that are not ideal for cross processing:

• The latest E6 materials
  • Provia 100
  • E100S

(These are not ideal because they give a very strong color cast which is quite hard to filter out)

Films that are good for cross processing:

Most other E6 films, especially the older formulas, such as EPP (Ektachrome), RDP, Ektachrome 200 and Provia 400

Reversed Cross Processing (i.e putting C-41 film through E6 chemicals)

This is a bit more difficult, but can give some interesting results. You will probably have to do some color filtering on the camera to get a satisfactory result. There is usually a speed loss of between three and four stops but part of this can usually be made up for by push processing.

Other processes:

• E6 - Slide film process
• C-41 - Negative film process

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