1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a color photographic light-sensitive material, and, more particularly to a silver halide color negative light-sensitive material capable of providing a color print dye image having excellent color reproducibility.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is well known that, when a silver halide color photographic material is color-developed, a color-forming coupler couples with an oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine developing agent to form a dye image of an indophenol, indamine, azomethine, phenoxazine, phenazine or a like structure. In this system, a color reproduction process based on subtractive color photography is usually employed, and a cyan dye image, a magenta dye image and a yellow dye image, which are in a complementary relationship with the original red, green and blue, respectively, of the object photographed, are formed. Usually, phenolic couplers (i.e., phenols and naphthols) are used for the formation of a cyan-dye image, pyrazolone or cyanoacetyl couplers are used for the formation of a magenta dye image, and acylacetamides or benzoylmethane couplers are used for the formation of a yellow dye image.
The thus formed dye image does not possess theoretically ideal spectral absorption characteristics. For example, a cyan dye image generally has side-absorptions of green light and blue light, although it should only absorb red light. Also, a magenta dye image generally has side-absorptions of blue light and red light, although it should only absorb green light. A yellow dye image has comparatively small side-absorption as compared with the above-described cyan and magenta dye images. Such side-absorptions are not advantageous for the color reproducibility of a light-sensitive material. As a process for removing this defect, a so-called masking process using a colored color-forming coupler has been put into practice in this field (for example, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,428,054). Color prints obtained from the masked color negative images have excellent color reproducibility.
According to the masking process, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,428,054, etc., it is desirable to use a cyan coupler which is colored so that it has absorption in the blue region and the green region (hereinafter referred to as "colored cyan coupler) in combination with a colorless cyan coupler, in order to remove the above-described cyan dye side-absorptions.
Colored cyan couplers are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,481,741, 3,459,552, 3,583,971, 2,455,169, 3,034,892, etc. However, these colored cyan couplers have the defect that those cyan couplers which have sufficient absorption in the blue region have insufficient absorption in the green region while those which have sufficient absorption in the green region have insufficient absorption in the blue region. Therefore, these colored couplers have insufficient masking properties.