A blue organic dye or pigment, particularly one of a class of synthetic dyes with cyanine structure used in photography and textiles.
From cyano- (blue) + -in (suffix for compounds/substances). The term entered chemistry in the 1800s for a new class of blue synthetic dyes.
Cyanin dyes revolutionized early color photography—they made film sensitive to red light for the first time, which sounds simple but was a major breakthrough that gave photographers a third color to work with beyond blue and green.
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