Currently, materials that allow facile patterning of luminescent images are limited. Patterning of organic and inorganic materials for light emitting diodes (OLEDs), and photovoltaic (OPV) applications is typically accomplished through thermal evaporation. While this method yields excellent control over thickness and uniformity of patterned thin films, it is costly to scale up, and is intolerant to many types of polymer substrates. For these reasons, low temperature, solution-based patterning techniques are advantageous as they may enable high throughput roll-to-roll manufacturing of inexpensive devices. We have demonstrated that by bridging two-anthracene molecules symmetrically with a sulfur atom, that the photochemical behavior of these species is dramatically influenced by oxidizing the sulfur. The sulfoxide (SO)-bridged compound undergoes rapid extrusion of the SO bridge to yield bianthryl quantitatively, resulting in a large increase in photoluminescence intensity. Application of this photochemistry to form patterned images in thin films, and the applications of these materials, will be described.