Process for the formation of multicolor colloid patterns

A process for forming a line art or halftone multicolour colloid pattern which process comprises the following steps:

• (1) Exposing one-by-one in registration a plurality of differently coloured hardening developable photographic materials each comprising a temporary unsubbed hydrophobic organic resin support carrying photosensitive coloured hardening developable hydrophilic colloid-silver halide emulsion layer, which upon hardening development generates an active species for the hardening of the hydrophilic colloid thereof while said hardening developable silver halide emulsion-colloid layer stands in direct contact with a silver halide emulsion material representing a negative or positive separation image of monochrome information contained in a multicolour image to be reproduced,
• (2) transferring integrally the coloured silver halide emulsion layer of each exposed photographic material onto an intermediate support carrying a stripping layer, by pressing the said colloid-silver halide emulsion layer in the presence of an aqueous liquid into contact with the stripping layer of the intermediate support and removing the temporary support,
• (3) hardening developing the transferred exposed coloured colloid-silver halide layer by means of a hardening development agent to generate said active species and effect imagewise hardening of the hydrophilic colloid of said imagewise exposed colloid-silver halide emulsion layer and removing by wash-off processing the non-hardened colloid portions thereof to leave a coloured relief image on said intermediate support,
• (4) producing a multicolour multi-layer pattern of an assembly of superposed differently coloured relief images on the same intermediate support by repeating the steps (1), (2), and (3), for each such photographic material, the exposures being executed for forming different images in the differently coloured hardening developable colloid-emulsion layers and the transfers of the differently exposed layers proceeding in registration on top of any already formed relief images on said intermediate support, and
• (5) transferring bodily said multi-layer assembly of differently coloured relief images from said intermediate support onto a permanent support carrying an adhesive layer by pressing the assembly into contact with such adhesive layer and peeling away the intermediate support leaving its stripping layer and said multi-layer assembly adhering on the permanent support as a multi-coloured relief image.