We completely changed the way these are made. Here's the short story. In the 80's lead ink was banned. Backglasses were seldom made after the ban because the glasses could not look the same as they did with lead paint. If they looked good unlit they were washed out when lit, if they looked over saturated when unlit they looked fine when lit. A few years ago we found a line of silk screened inks that claimed to be like lead inks in their properties. We tied many and I mean many experiments and some hues looked better than others but the truth was they were not the same as lead based inks, only about 10x more expensive.
We pulled the plug on those glasses in the spring of 2018 and would never have made another CMYK glass however, we bought some leading edge tech that allowed us to use RGB colors which means way less conversion loss and more accurate colors. The new tech allows us to individually play with the colors AND saturation at the same time! We can add density for EACH color in 1% increments, from 50% right up to 300%!! We have also pioneered some features that allow the glass to be properly saturated when unlit AND to be properly saturated when lit which means approximating the beautiful colors and saturation of the old lead based inks, which until recently were just not possible.
Kevin and Stu are possibly the most anal guys I know when it comes to color and accuracy and they go to great lengths to make sure these glasses are the best they can be! When opinions flare as they some times do we can now make multiple versions instead of getting stuck with 100 purple Barracora back glasses..... Yes! I am talking to you..... bloody Barracora! You VERY costly mistake! LOL
On top of this new found ability to control saturation AND saturation differences when lit and unlit which we could never do before we have also really taken to adding mirroring to old shitty translites to make them into proper mirrored backglasses! These has been a real game changer! I love the new mirrored backglasses and my TAF and TZ now have real backglasses that pop!! Now we just need to find a way to rescue that shitty out of focus translite in my ToM!! But that's a battle for tomorrow.
Mike
Halifax, NS
Grass Valley, CA
Warrington
