Qualitative and Quantitative Treatment of Thin-Layer Chromatograms of Incompletely Separated Synthetic Food Colors

A procedure for the qualitative and quantitative determination of dyes after thin-layer chromatographic separation is developed using an example of five synthetic food colors: Brilliant Blue, Tartrazine, Sunset Yellow, Ponceau 4R, and Azorubine. The chromatogram is scanned and saved in Windows 95/98 raster image format and processed by the Adobe Photoshop 5.0 program package. The procedure is applicable even when the dyes are incompletely separated on the chromatogram.