autochrome

American  

[aw-tuh-krohm] / ˈɔ təˌkroʊm /

noun

Photography.

1. a material once used for color photography, consisting of a photographic emulsion applied over a multicolored screen of minute starch grains dyed red, green, and blue-violet.

---

Etymology

Origin of autochrome

First recorded in 1905–10; auto- ¹ + -chrome

Example Sentences

As the world entered the tumultuous ’30s—a decade of avid modernism, economic upheaval and creeping fascism—the autochrome aesthetic was suddenly too rose-colored, its saturated light too Edenic.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 21, 2025

Introduced the previous year, the autochrome photograph was largely gone by 1930.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 21, 2025

One, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” mixes a muted autochrome look with naturalistic lighting to conjure a mood of impending doom.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 5, 2024

These autochrome plates produced a unique image that could then be processed into a lantern slide or a four-color print.

From New York Times • Jun. 16, 2016

Blue light, on the other hand, is very active, and were the blue and red lights to be allowed to act equally on the autochrome plate, the result would be much too blue.

From Marvels of Scientific Invention An Interesting Account in Non-technical Language of the Invention of Guns, Torpedoes, Submarine Mines, Up-to-date Smelting, Freezing, Colour Photography, and many other recent Discoveries of Science by Corbin, Thomas W.