The Autochrome Lumière was an early colour photography process patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907. Autochrome was an additive color "mosaic screen plate" process. It was one of the principal colour photography processes in use before the advent of subtractive color film in the mid-1930s. A competing process was the three-colour principle of the Russian Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.
Prior to the Lumière brothers, Louis Ducos du Hauron utilized the separation technique to create colour images on paper with screen plates, producing natural colours through superimposition, which would become the foundation of all commercial colour photography. Descendants of photographer Antoine Lumière, inventors Louis and Auguste Lumière utilized Du Hauron's (1869) technique, which had already been improved upon by other inventors such as John Joly (1894) and James William McDonough (1896), making it possible to print photographic images in colour. One of the most broadly used forms of colour photography in the early twentieth century, autochrome was recognized for its aesthetic appeal.
