Unless you are seeing something abnormal, all color negatives have a yellowish – orange cast. This includes the unexposed edges. This normal yellow – orange is called a “mask”.

The reason for the yellow – orange mask: Color films depend on three dyes that form the color image. These are yellow – magenta (red + green) – cyan (blue + green). We can make a marvelous yellow dye, an OK magenta dye, but the cyan dye is lousy. The yellow dye is a blue light blocker. The magenta dye is a green light blocker. The cyan dye is a red light blocker. The cyan dye should stop red light -- allowing green and blue light to pass. The problem is, to make the cyan dye strong enough, it unwantedly blocks some of the green and the blue. Not the dye we want.

We have searched for improved cyan magenta dye, but no cigar. This is because all three dyes must be transparent until commanded to blossom. All are nearly transparent, and this state is called leuco (Greek for transparent /blank). All are missing the same ingredient called CD4. This is a component of the developer solution. When the film is being developed, the CD4 combines with the leuco dye to form a full blown dye. To keep the developing process simple: one missing ingredient for all three dyes. That complicates by narrowing down the list of available dyes. Thus we are forced to use inferior cyan and not quite perfect magenta.

Yellow – orange mask to the rescue. The magenta and cyan dyes are intentionally colored a warm hue in their undeveloped state. As they develop, they blossom to full magenta and full cyan, Always surrounding them will be undeveloped dye. It is this undeveloped cyan and magenta dye that gives the negatives their orange – yellow coloration. This mask is not uniform. It is strong in the unexposed areas and weak in the exposed areas. Its job is to correct the deficiencies of these two dyes.

We can do this in a color negative because the negative is a means to and end -- i.e. making a print on paper. We can’t get away with this technique on a slide film.

So don’t blame the orange mask for your difficulty. I could be that your negatives are contaminated and stained. I don’t think so. You just need to find the right correction to apply to get a good color balance.