These stunning postcards of Scotland during the end of the 19th century were produced by the Detroit Publishing Company using the Photochrom process, a technique used to apply vibrant and surprisingly realistic color to black and white images.
The process, invented in the 1880s by an employee of a Swiss printing company, involves coating lithographic limestone tablets with a light-sensitive emulsion and exposing them to light under a photo negative. For each tint that was used in the final color composite, an additional litho stone is created.
The process was very time-consuming and required painstaking attention to detail, but the result was color postcards that captured the cities, moors, and ruined castles of Scotland with an impressive degree of verisimilitude, particularly during a time when color photography was just being developed.
Source: mashable
Photos: Library of Congress
