A single, narrow glass plate about 3 inches wide by 9 inches long was placed vertically into the camera by Prokudin-Gorskii . He then photographed the same scene three times in a fairly rapid sequence using a red filter, a green filter and a blue filter.

When viewed through Prokudin-Gorskii’s camera, the scene being photographed would have appeared upside down and reversed from its actual orientation.

For the digital process, the original tri-part glass negative is scanned with an overhead digital camera in grayscale mode. Image-editing software converts the scan of the entire plate from negative to positive form. The scan is inverted to represent the original physical orientation.

The entire plate is then reduced to 8-bit grayscale mode. Under magnification, the quality of each image on the plate is reviewed for contrast, degree of color separation, extent of damage to the emulsion, and any other details that might affect the final color composite.

The scan of the entire plate is aligned and the outside edges are cropped.

An electronic file is created for each image from the cropped tri-part plate forming three separate “layers” from which the final color composite will be generated. The layers are labeled by color.

While still in grayscale mode, the red(R), blue(B), and green(G) layers are aligned forming the “RGB” color composite. This registration process is the most difficult step.

The RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color composite is cropped to eliminate all but the photographic area shared in common by all three layers.

The cropped color composite is adjusted overall to create the proper contrast, appropriate highlight and shadow detail, and optimal color balance.

Final adjustments may be applied to specific, localized areas of the composite color image to minimize defects associated with over or underexposure, development, or aging of the emulsion of Prokudin-Gorskii’s original glass plate.