consumer inkjet

[BetterSense]

I am typically non-digital, so I am not very up to date on the state of the art at all.

My wife bought a wireless ink jet so she can print from her phone easily. She pays HP a flat fee for enough ink cartridges by mail for X pages per month. Near the end of the month she prints out photos on cheap ink jet paper to use up the quota. Some of these end up on the wall or in albums.

Several questions : 1, how archival is this, 2) is the image quality of more expensive printers actually better or more archival than this consumer stuff? I am happy with the image quality when the source file comes from a cell phone, but concerned about whether we should get C-prints made of the images we want to last for decades.

[IanG]

From experience of the first half decent Epson Inkjet prints have lasted far better than expected, as well as 60's Kodak colour prints if not a lot better after about 20 years. My sister has a print I did from a scanned print of her twins on the wall for over 15 years that I printed with an Epson Colour Stylus Pro when they'd just come out, it doesn't appear to have faded, I think they were about 10 or 11 at the time, they are 30 next month..

If you want archival the you get a higher end Inkjet printer that can use Pigment inks rather than Dye, that'll be more archival than RA-4 prints.

Ian

[Darko Pozar]

It all also depends on the paper stock you use. Pigment inks rather than dyes are more archival on paper made with cotton or bamboo rag. In my opinion avoid the brighter white papers as they contain phosphors which in turn become yellow over time.

Leonardo da Vinci used inks in his time...

[BetterSense]

So, among LF practicioners of color who print with inkjet, do most of them use pigment inks,or is that just a high-end rare thing?

I am trying to figure out how close I am to printing LF color. I have a V500 somewhere, I am having evil thoughts of scanning or DSLR-copying some of my color negatives. What is not attractive to me before becomes attractive if it's free...

[Sal Santamaura]

I'd suggest spending some time here:

http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/index.html

[Tyler Boley]

Actually C prints may or may not last for decades, depending a variety of factors, display conditions, storage method, etc etc.. most of the fine art prints I and other artists made in the 80s and 90s, even for collectors or museums, are considerably different than when they were made and the artist's intentions. The longevity of your HP prints depends on the particular inkset your printer uses, and the paper being used. There are no quick convenient answers. The more expensive photo printers tend to have finer resolution and gradations for photography. Whether or not they have more gamut and maximum density depends on what you are using now. Pigment inks are the norm in these models, Epson, Canon, and the fine art photo HP printers, and offer longevity far greater than dye inks, and type C materials, with the majority of quality papers designed for them. As Sal said, Aardenburg is THE source for longevity information.

and oh.. none of this is free

[philipus]

I can't add to the OP's question but found the info on the Aardenburg site regarding the SC P400 interesting. I wonder how much more cost-effective it will be.

[tjvitale]

Look at the reports on WIR. Henry Wilhelm has been evaluating imaging materials since the 1970s. WIR has amassed the most comprehensive array of answers to your seemingly simple question.

The model for making money in printing is to give away the printer and make mounds of money selling the ink. Billions have been made. I think HP survived the 2000-crash, and Carly Fiorina, because they had a good-sized chunk of the printer market.

Inks are the primary issue, while the paper is of secondary paper importance. Dye based inks fad quickly. Some within days of going on display. Pigment-based inks tend to have greater longevity. Dye-based inks are very inexpensive to manufacture and distribute. In the case of pigment-based inks, the paper tends to be the mode of failure. Most imaging papers include OBA, when these papers looses optical brightener intensity they yellow. OBA, optical brightener agents, are a cost effective way to add brightness, a blue fluorescent output, to the base color of many papers, which is yellow. Eventually, the materials that the paper is made of will begin to degrade and yellow on their own; a second type of paper yellowing. The best example of the latter would be copy paper, the lowest end of the market. There are professional imaging papers made without OBAs, but they tend to have a natural tone and not to be bright white. Many professionals demand the whitest possible base tone, this is very difficult and expensive. The photographic world solved this by adding the Baryta layer to photographic papers in the 1920s.

Mark McCormick-Goodhart (I worked with many years ago) left the government and went off to build a digital imaging portal at Old Town Imaging in the 1990s. Later he worked with Henry Wilhelm for a few years on cold storage. Recently he developed his own ink and paper longevity evaluation protocol (I* Metric) and a website at <http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/cgi-bin/mrk/_4777c2hvd19kb2NfbGlzdC80> called Aardenburg Imaging & Archives. His work is less accessible than WIRs. He doesn't produce digested data in technical reports, but rather he reports results on the fading of individual ink and paper combinations. Mark's results are superior because his measurement and evaluation technology are modern and superior.

Henry's (WIR) work has more breadth because he began to develop it in the 1970s when he was evaluating photographic material and dogging Kodak to improve their longevity. Kodak did improve longevity because Wilhelm was there evaluating their products and reporting results in the trade press. WIR continues to use the same methodology today developed 40+ years ago. This make all the results relevant to each other, but not as technically reliable as those made using the I* Metric.

However, the bottom line is the same: consumer products bad, with professional pigment-based-inks better.

Nothing is as good as one would want, but then these are real world products meeting the needs of consumers and professionals. Consumers want quick and cheap, professionals want control and superior images no matter the complexity. There are products that bridge the gap, but they tend to be at the outer reaches of the consumer comfort zone in both cost and complexity.

Wilhelm's massive book on all his early work, printed in 1993, can be downloaded from the WIR site <http://wilhelm-research.com/book_toc.html>. This has all the relevant data on the "C Print." They have quite bad longevity, although they were the "consumer" standard for many, many years.

Digitally produced images made using professional grade equipment and materials are far superior in both dark storage (sitting in a drawer) and on display, when compared to any dye-base photographic imaging materials. There is one exception.

The Dye Transfer Print can have a very long life (500 years it is rumored) if made properly using the standard (best grade) of materials. They usually fail due to yellowing. Testing of actual samples and "examples on the wall" have shown this to be their point of failure. They are not made anymore because the master printmakers have all retired or passed away. In addition, the materials are all but non-existent. You may have been thinking of the Dye Transfer Print when your wrote C Print.

Tim Vitale
Art Conservator & Digital Imaging
Oakland, CA
510-594-8277
Follow the history of imaging using:
http://www.vitaleartconservation.com...nology_v28.pdf

[BetterSense]

I find it interesting that dye transfers have good longevity even though they are made with dyes.

[Sal Santamaura]

...Wilhelm's massive book on all his early work, printed in 1993, can be downloaded from the WIR site <http://wilhelm-research.com/book_toc.html>. This has all the relevant data on the "C Print." They have quite bad longevity, although they were the "consumer" standard for many, many years.

Digitally produced images made using professional grade equipment and materials are far superior in both dark storage (sitting in a drawer) and on display, when compared to any dye-base photographic imaging materials. There is one exception.

The Dye Transfer Print can have a very long life (500 years it is rumored) if made properly using the standard (best grade) of materials. They usually fail due to yellowing. Testing of actual samples and "examples on the wall" have shown this to be their point of failure. They are not made anymore because the master printmakers have all retired or passed away. In addition, the materials are all but non-existent. You may have been thinking of the Dye Transfer Print when your wrote C Print...

I find it interesting that dye transfers have good longevity even though they are made with dyes.

The cited Wilhelm book was written before he started taking funding from manufacturers, so it can actualy be relied on for useful information If you read it, the notable superiority o Fuji Crystal Archive C-prints (even way back in the early 1990s) to dye transfer prints when displayed becomes evident. It's only if kept in the dark that dye transfer prints are stable. And Fuji C-prints are pretty darn good under those conditions too.