Bypassing Bleach & Retaining Silver

Back in 1959, Japanese cinematographer Kazuo Miyazawa invented a new and odd way to develop film that resulted in a very interesting look that has become quite common in modern movies.

Developing silver-gelatin film requires these basic steps:

1) A color developer develops the silver negative image and activates dye couplers in each color layer.
2) A bleach bath converts the developed silver image into silver halide crystals.
3) A fixer removes the silver salts.
4) A wash bath removes all remaining chemistry.
5) Stabilization.
6) Drying.

The modification Miyazawa made to the process was simple: skip the bleach bath. The result was an overall retention of the silver in the film. This process is called, for reasons that should now be obvious, "Bleach-Bypass", or "Silver-Retention" development.

So what does this do to the resultant image?

The film takes on a sort of diffuse, silvery glow, with increased contrast and desaturated colors. It's a very dramatic, iconic look that you will be familiar with if you have ever seen one of the many movies that make use of it such as:

Saving Private Ryan
300
Black Hawk Down
Se7en
Three Kings
Minority Report

These films are extreme examples, many more movies use the process more subtly or for certain scenes only. It can be very effective at conveying a gritty, vintage look.

This process can also be faked in Photoshop by studying and copying the effects on a given negative.

Here's an example of a Photoshop version of the effect applied to a conventional digital photograph. You can see the heightened contrast and desaturated colors produced by this effect.