Archival inkjet *papers* (not ink). Do they exist?

[paulr]

one thing crossed my mind ... it's possible for something airborn to be yellowing the papers prematurely. the coatings on the paper are designed to receive ink; they can receive a lot of other things too. i haven't seen much research on this, but i suspect that without at least a couple of coats of a good fixative, these papers could pull things out of the air like flypaper. could there be anything unusual in the environment where your prints are stored?

[robc]

Paul, I looked at the livick site and it says that the tests have been removed because of threats from various organisations about the its content.

[tim atherton]

"I'm surprised you had photorag yellow; I've never heard of that before. Livick found it to be extremely stable. "

the main problem with Photorag was not usually yellowing/warming over time, but very bad contact (usually) yellowing from things like adhesives. This usually shows itself as patches of "pee-yellowing". It was happening even with the supposedly "archival" tape Hahnemuller used to tape the paper rolls. It didn't just show on the spot where the tape was affixed, but would effect a few layers below too.

BTW Livick doesn't list the test anymore.

[Brian Ellis]

"I have printed primarily on Enhanced Matte but have also seen some very slight yellowing on Archival matte . . . "

As far as I know these are the same paper, Epson just changed the name from Archival to Enhanced but I didn't think there were any changes in the paper itself.

[paulr]

too bad about livick. there was a lot of good info on that site.

[Paddy Quinn]

The problem with Livick was his methodology was all over the place. He'd run different papers on different printers with different inks and then try and compare the results. He'd try one light intensity but after a while figure it wasn't doing what he wanted, so he'd switch to another - but not really pick up the tests he abandonded. He spray some papers, coat others with varnish, then find the varnish or spray had (what he considered) a deteremental effect so he'd switch to another mid flow. He'd include one set of data from one set of test, but not include it from another. And lots of the time he didn't included real hard figures but opinion. And so on and so on. He wasn't even close to adopting a scientific approach, but neither was he emulating real world conditions. All in all the results were pretty much unreliable and close to useless.

I wouldn't be suprised if certain ink or paper manufacturers threatened justifiable legal action.

[David F]

I've looked on the Whilhem and Livik (?) web sites for permanence info.

Based on this, I use Moab Entrada Natural and Crane Museo II (my current fav!) and might consider Hahnemuhle PhotoRag in the future. Also, based mostly on info from Livick web site (which he is discontinuing by the way -- says he's tired of getting so much guff for his testing and opinions), I spray all my prints with Lyson Print Guard. Livick claims that spraying with some kind of UV/print protectant is the only way to get long-lasting prints.

Livick also highly recommends ClearShield (I think that's the name), which is used mostly by the sign industry. Livich says he gets the longest lasting prints with this product, but it has to be brushed on (or use an industrial sprayer) so I haven't tried it yet.

I think besides this, its important to store or mat and frame images properly for longevity.

Hope that helps, David.

[Mike Chini]

There are very conflicting reports as always regarding the reliability of spraying prints. One website quotes a curator as saying that all spray coating will yellow at some point. Nontheless, I'm not terribly concerned with the fade-resistance of properly framed prints on natural, acid-free, non-optical brightening papers behind uv glass and place dout of the sun! I just want to be able to print images on a luster-type surface and have the paper base stay white... and for a long time!

Considering what an enormous market the inket printing industry is, I find it remarkable that we can't print out images, put them in an album and expect them to look brand new for a decent period of time. Very disappointing for those of us who prefer non-matte papers for most subjects. HP? Dye-sub? Fuji?

MC

[paulr]

the technology probably just isn't there yet. for a while it was presumed impossible to get pigment inks to work at all with inkjet printers. they finally figured it out. stable glossy prints is one of the next hurdles.

[RDKirk]

>>the main problem with Photorag was not usually yellowing/warming over time, but very bad contact (usually) yellowing from things like adhesives. This usually shows itself as patches of "pee-yellowing". It was happening even with the supposedly "archival" tape Hahnemuller used to tape the paper rolls. It didn't just show on the spot where the tape was affixed, but would effect a few layers below too. <<

So don't use adhesives. Nobody advises the use of any adhesive as an "archival" solution anymore, not even wheat paste. Use polyester or mylar photo corners instead.