To return to our flower-pot. The red-screen positive (dyed blue) is, as we saw, quite transparent where the pot should be. But behind the transparent gap are the pink and yellow positives.
White light (= violet + green + red) passes through pink (= violet + red), and has to surrender all its green rays. The violet and red pass on and encounter yellow (= green + red), and violet falls a victim to green, leaving red unmolested.
If the flower-pot had been white all three positives would have contained clear patches unaffected by the three dyes, and the white light would have been unobstructed. The gradations and mixtures of colours are obtained by two of the screens being influenced by the colour of the object. Thus, if it were crimson, both violet and red-screen negatives would be affected by the rays reflected by it, and the green screen negative not at all. Hence the pink positive would be pink, the yellow clear, and the blue clear.
White light passing through is robbed by pink of green, leaving red + violet = crimson.
Colour Printing.
Printing in ink colours is done in a manner very similar to the Sanger Shepherd lantern slide process. Three blocks are made, by the help of photography, through violet, green and red screens, and etched away with acid, like ordinary half-tone black-and-white blocks. The three blocks have applied to them ink of a complementary colour to the screen they represent, just as in the Sanger Shepherd process the positives were dyed. The three inks are laid over one another on the paper by the blocks, the relieved parts of which (corresponding to the undissolved gelatine of the Shepherd positives) only take the ink. White light being reflected through layers of coloured inks is treated in just the same way as it would be were it transmitted through coloured glasses, yielding all the colours in approximately correct gradations.