It's official! Ink jet prints equal or surpass Eastman's dye transfer prints!

[David A. Goldfarb]

I think it's deliberately misleading to refer to an inkjet print as a "machine dye transfer" print. "Dye transfer" has a very well established usage as a gallery term, and to appropriate it in this way strikes me as parasitic and willful fraud. It is certainly possible to make fine inkjet prints worthy of museum exhibition, so let the process stand on its own without confusing the issue.

As to whether people can tell the difference, I would not be surprised if even experienced printers and curators could not tell the difference between a well made inkjet on baryta paper and a dye transfer on baryta. It takes quite a lot of specialized training to be able to identify a process from the print. I and a few other printers once made some prints for an appraiser who was conducting a workshop in print identification for art appraisers and curators in other fields looking to get into photography. The main purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate how difficult it is. We had about 20-odd prints ranging from silver gelatin of a few different varieties, albumen, platinum, to high-end inkjets and inkjets from office printers, Xerox copies, and even one Xerox on overhead projector film, just to see if the students in the workshop could tell that it was a transparency mounted on an opaque backing. I could identify most of them, save for the combined processes like platinum over cyanotype. The workshop leader said that most of the participants couldn't identify more than two or three, but there was one younger curator who worked with photographs who could identify five or so.

So getting back to Sandy's question, what is the motivation for the comparison? If the image quality (whatever this means--dye transfer was never really the sharpest print process) and archival stability of an inkjet print now rivals dye transfer, that's great news, but please, let's not muddle the market by claiming that an inkjet is a dye transfer print of any sort.

[Jay DeFehr]

Excellent points, David. An inkjet is not a dye transfer print, the OP's evaluations of the prints are purely subjective, and there is nothing "official" about his conclusions, but more interestingly -- why did he bother? It seems he celebrating victory in some debate the rest of us are not privy to-- perhaps with Ctein? He does seem excited, though. Very funny.

[SpeedGraphicMan]

You need to state in what way the inject prints are better.

Did you test with Glossy, Satin/Lustre, Matte papers?

Did you test with all brands of consumer/prosumer/professional inkjet printers as well as manufacturer's inks and off-brand inks and off-brand papers?

Did you spend the time required to artificially "age" both prints to see which one holds up better under "light" and "dark" fading conditions?

Did you test the effects of atmospheric staining on the emulsion or paper base?
What if the prints were owned by someone who smoked all the time? How would the prints react to being subjected to smoke or smog?

Did you test to see which one bests withstands organic breakdown? I.E. Which one resisted the growth of mold/mildew in the emulsion or paper base?

How about the integrity of the paper base? Did you test to see if it will dry out, crack/shrink/expand in various conditions of humidity/heat?

How are you supposed to know which will still look the best 20-50 years from now?

I seems to me that your tests are exactly as you stated, "Half-Assed", and the should be treated as such.

How would we like it if camera manufacturers or film manufacturers approached everything "Half-Assed" ?
That would be Hasselblad saying, "Well, the HD60 works, but we built it "Half-Assed", so we can't guarantee, that it will work properly all the time"...

Would anyone take them seriously or buy their product?

What you have posted here is apparently nothing more than your own opinion, merely based upon "looking" at both prints and comparing colors.

You can hardly expect each of us to jump on the band-wagon with your "Half-Assed test".

I am not trying to be mean, I am simply trying to help you understand what should go into comparing prints.

As someone with over a decade of archival and restoration work under my belt, I think I know a bit about this.

[azdustdevil]

Doesn't matter if he's right or wrong....inkjet is just about all we have now. So it's all moot anyway. Thank goodness I can still get film. Wonder how long that will last?

[SpeedGraphicMan]

Doesn't matter if he's right or wrong....inkjet is just about all we have now. So it's all moot anyway. Thank goodness I can still get film. Wonder how long that will last?

Well, since B&W film is the only thing with which to shoot color separation negatives for archival processing, film is gonna be around a LONG time...

I still do RA-4 color processing in my darkroom.

[polyglot]

Given that most digital minilab prints are on RA4, that will last quite a while I suspect though we might end up with only high-contrast options. It's consumed by the acre commercially so is significantly cheaper than B&W paper.

As to this "test", I still don't understand what the OP was actually comparing, despite the excitement. Dynamic range? Resolution? Fading? He mentions water resistance but I fail to see any relevance to that.

[bob carnie]

Not anymore are minilab prints on RA4,, most places in Toronto that offer small prints are using Dry Labs by Fuji or Noritsu that use inkjet technology.
Quality is surprisingly good. I suspect the complete switch to inkjet will take at the max 3-5 years.

Given that most digital minilab prints are on RA4, that will last quite a while I suspect though we might end up with only high-contrast options. It's consumed by the acre commercially so is significantly cheaper than B&W paper.

As to this "test", I still don't understand what the OP was actually comparing, despite the excitement. Dynamic range? Resolution? Fading? He mentions water resistance but I fail to see any relevance to that.

[robert lyons]

Seems a moot point. As has been already stated DT's were often done with dyes supplied by Eastman Kodak that were highly fugitive, especially the Yellow dye of the 1980's....on exhibition they often showed problems sooner than Chromogenic dye coupler prints-which we all know are not stable. As far as I know the only true archival color analog print is the Tri-Color Carbon print, a process so difficult to master that few people ever attempted to do it. There is one lab in the USA which offers this service still and the prints are truly amazing to behold.
There are many DT's that look beautiful even after 50 years but storage/display conditions are a big part of the equation as well as the lab that made the prints....one can easily see the difference in the two if you look closely at Eggleston's work, most of the early pieces are DT and later work type C or inkjet.

[polyglot]

Not anymore are minilab prints on RA4,, most places in Toronto that offer small prints are using Dry Labs by Fuji or Noritsu that use inkjet technology.
Quality is surprisingly good. I suspect the complete switch to inkjet will take at the max 3-5 years.

well, shit. There goes my hopes of having a process hang around in the long term.

Our local pro labs still primarily do lightjet RA4, though they of course offer inkjet on rag.

[bob carnie]

My lab does Inkjet, RA4 , Lambda silver prints and traditional enlarger prints.
We compete against a lot of labs one being Ed Burtynsky's lab which will stay RA4 as long as he continues with his Chromira prints.
I personally like RA4 prints and will continue for as long as the materials are available.. I must say our inkjet printers are much more active than any output devices we have. But RA4 is much faster and still
wins out IMO on colour fidelity.

I would not worry too much about the lack of supply's .
Keep in mind that my comments may be geographical location specific as Toronto was one of the first communities where the pro photographers went completely digital. A lot of the Dlabs and Fuji Frontier systems here have been shipped off shore and there is a very vibrant market for these kind of devices if one wants to sell this type of gear. Just not in Ontario, you cannot give away a D lab or Frontier here.

well, shit. There goes my hopes of having a process hang around in the long term.

Our local pro labs still primarily do lightjet RA4, though they of course offer inkjet on rag.