A kromogram consists of three glass stereo pairs, each pair taken in sequence through a different color filter using a camera with a sliding back. The Krömsköp viewer then combined the three sets of views using filters and semi-transparent mirrors.

Ives introduced the Krömsköp in 1895, after working on it for almost 20 years, but although the Krömsköp produced very realistic color images, it was not successful. It was expensive—a viewer with eight Kromograms cost $50 in 1901 ($1850 in today's dollars). It required a very strong light source. Achieving a quality image required aligning the three slides precisely. Most importantly, Kromograms did not fit user's expectations of photography. Ives tried to position Kromograms as another form of removable media analogous to phonograph records and movies:

The phonograph cylinder must be placed in the phonograph before it can be made to reproduce the sounds recorded; the kinetoscope ribbon must pass through the kinetoscope in order to visually reproduce the moving scene; and the Kromogram must be placed in the Krömsköp in order to visually reproduce the object photographed (Ives 1901, 5).

But that was not what people had grown to expect from photography. A review in the American Journal of Photography pointed out “that most people have looked for a process of color photography which would decorate our walls and illustrate our books and periodicals.” (Quoted in Ives 1901, 28).