Archival digital inkjet printing........

[sanking]

I am personally very pleased with the Piezography K7 ink set with the Epson 7600 and have gotten a lot of personal support from Jon Cone. Having worked with QTR for many years in making digital negatives I love the control that is possible with QTR, and although the number of papers supported for the 7600 by Cone is somewhat limited it is very easy to run a linearizing curve for other papers with either a scanner or spectrophotometer. At this time QTR has a Java Script for use with a scanner, and some people who make digital negatives have been using for several years a Java Script that can be downloaded from http://www.davideisenlord.com/?p=229.

Learning to use QTR to make digital negatives for an alternative process like carbon or pt/pd is somewhat more complicated than using it to make inkjet prints because you must first have process control. But it is by no means an impossible task, even with a very complicated process like carbon transfer.

Sandy

[MHMG]

Ink on paper has been around a long, long time. I'm not surprised.

I think the biggest wildcard is the paper coatings. We don't what those are or how they'll behave.

Of course we have no idea what crap our gelatin silver are made out of, either! At least the inkjet paper companies give us some clues about the contents of the paper base, the acid neutrality, if there are OBAs or not, etc ...

Yes, ink sets are easier to characterize on "general light fade performance" properties than are the media we choose to print on. If that weren't the case, I'd have quit doing light fastness testing some time ago because it's pretty easy to cover the major OEM and third party inks on the market. Far harder to tackle all the OEM and third party branded and rebadged media that exist today plus all the ink interactions with those media. So, just a heads up on what's on my research agenda for the next few years.... light induced dark storage staining. Basically, after some exposure to light, many coatings that contain TiO2 (100% guaranteed in Resin Coated papers) develop a stain or discoloration in dark storage that well exceeds what happens to the same media if always stored in the dark. Hence, it's "light-induced dark storage staining", and it is frequently reversible with additional light exposure to some extent but not necessarily in total. However, this problem is a new issue in modern media (mentioned only once AFAIK but not explored in any detail in the technical literature) and the exposure reciprocity characteristics are totally unknown at this time. TiO2 was never used as the whitening pigment in traditional fiber base silver gelatin print media nor in traditional artists' watercolor papers, but it was introduced and is used 100% of the time in RC photo papers since they were introduced in the late 1960s. TiO2 is now showing up often in inkjet "traditional fiber" media as well, plus perhaps in matte fine are inkjet media, too. Lots of research needed. The manufacturers have been totally silent on this issue perhaps because they have not been looking for it in their testing. I stumbled on the problem after revisiting some of the samples that I'd discontinued in light fade testing some months after the testing ended. I'm just beginning to get a handle on the scope and seriousness, but it's a pretty serious issue, IMHO, for print makers who want exceptional long term stability in their printed images.

best,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com