Look at those Lollipops! Integrating Color into News Pictures

The coloring of news photographs was contingent on developments in color photography and polychromatic printing techniques, but just as crucially required the motivation of different professions to see both technologies converge around current events magazines. Color illustrations or design elements had started to enliven weekly supplements of major European and American newspapers in the 1890s. Only a small part of this color was photographic at first. In the early 1930s, however, a new wave of colorful content based on photography swept lifestyle magazines and advertising, where the use of photography itself was an emerging innovation. Whatever a publication’s thematic content, technical issues framed the adoption of color and how it was presented to readers. Full-color printing was more complicated than the monochrome variety. Color presses printed three or four different inks (cyan, magenta, and yellow, plus black), and represented a significant enough investment to still be a rarity in 1950.