Archival inkjet prints

[Bob Carnie]

I have the same Canon line of printer,, I still am confused as to the keeping properties of these prints, to date I have never heard anyone present a well thought out explanation of how these pigments will indeed last.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I have the same Canon line of printer,, I still am confused as to the keeping properties of these prints, to date I have never heard anyone present a well thought out explanation of how these pigments will indeed last.

Well the inks are relatively new and permanence testing is still ongoing. You can’t say something lasts even 10 years if nothing printed with it is even that old. Canon is no slouch, just like with their camera products, I’d expect anything they state to be very conservative.

That being said, I’ve seen big prints on the older LUCIA Pigment inks that are a few years old now and they still look great. I’d expect the newest Lucia PRO pigments to be even better in terms of permanence. I’ve got a number of prints that I’ve printed out on archival cotton rag sitting out where the sun is hitting it to see what happens over a few years time, however it’s been less than a year so far, and they look exactly the same as the day I printed them. If all goes well, they’ll still look the same many years from now.

Everybody who makes this stuff knows what causes inks and pigments to fade over time. This isn’t a new phenomenon, so it’s just a matter of making pigments that resists that as much as possible.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Hi Adrian, it has been my experience that the Manufacturers will say whatever they want regarding stability, Kodak and Preserve your Memories on good Kodak colour paper was drilled into us. We know where those prints have gone..
Remember the Cibachrome 200 year claim and refund policy, I owned a Cibachrome process line and new this was bullshit.


I suspect AArenburg and Wilheim would be the best resource to this aspect of pigment prints... I am hopeful that the Lucia pigments are good as I do sell these prints, I just have never gotten over the colour fade issue of the 70's, 80's and 90's .

My gut tells me the Word is out and the engineers that make these machines are indeed looking for the right mix of equipment, pigments and papers.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I suspect AArenburg and Wilheim would be the best resource to this aspect of pigment prints... I am hopeful that the Lucia pigments are good as I do sell these prints, I just have never gotten over the colour fade issue of the 70's, 80's and 90's .

I’ve never seen a color process last forever. We all know even color films fade over time, and even the best RA-4 prints on the best paper will start to noticeably shift color after 50-60 years or so. Even old oil paintings experience aging and have to have restoration work done from time to time.

That being said, I would expect modern pigment prints on good paper to last at least as long as the C-Type prints that so many people treat as the gold standard today, and from what I’ve seen so far, it looks like they will indeed go at least as long if not longer. If not, well, then they last a lot longer than dye based inks, and I’d expect manufacturers to keep at it and keep releasing revisions that improve over the last one until it is permanent enough. Analog processes are how old? Digital processes are how old? By the time digital processes are as old as analog processes are now, they’ll probably far surpass anything in analog land, but I’ll be long gone by then, so won’t know.

Personally, if I really want something to last, I’ll turn it into black and white silver gelatin on a fiber base, then make sure I have a digital version of it in a format that I’m reasonably sure will be readable long into the future, then make sure I have multiple copies of that in as archival of a form as possible. However, I’m a realist. Once I kick the bucket, my kids very well may take all my work and simply dispose of it because it’s not important to them, so for a lot of things, since I’m not a high value super popular art guy and probably never will be, the physical and digital versions only need to last long enough for my successors to either decide to dispose of it or take the digital version and generate a new physical copy on then modern processes and preserve it. The same goes for anything I sell or print for anybody. It’s important to the payer, but once they kick it, will it still be important? Who knows.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I've recently had some professional inkjet prints made that I’m told have archival keeping properties. Can anyone confirm how long an inkjet print is likely to last and not fade using the best printing machine/ink technology currently available?

google for 'Wilhelms Institute Research' who spent a great deal of effort to answer this question. They and manufacturers own research came to the conclusion that the Life expectancy of inkjet printsrival silver-gelatin prints. It seems that technology is at a point that, when properly stored, the paper base itself is the only difference in life expectancy and inkjet prints may be just as archival as analog prints. the last hallmark of analog prints may be broken. Now, if they just could make the inks smell like fixer.

 

[nmp]

Hi Adrian, it has been my experience that the Manufacturers will say whatever they want regarding stability, Kodak and Preserve your Memories on good Kodak colour paper was drilled into us. We know where those prints have gone..
Remember the Cibachrome 200 year claim and refund policy, I owned a Cibachrome process line and new this was bullshit.


I suspect AArenburg and Wilheim would be the best resource to this aspect of pigment prints... I am hopeful that the Lucia pigments are good as I do sell these prints, I just have never gotten over the colour fade issue of the 70's, 80's and 90's .

My gut tells me the Word is out and the engineers that make these machines are indeed looking for the right mix of equipment, pigments and papers.

Hi, Bob:

The best place to learn about these fade resistance issues on various inks/papers, I think, is Luminous Landscape. Many knowledgeable people there including Mark McCormick-Goodhart of the Aardenburg fame. In general, by my understanding, among the 3 printer majors, HP is at the top (by a long shot,) followed by Epson and then Canon. Unfortunately, it looks like Canon has dropped the ball on their latest reincarnation of the Lucia inks (called Lucia Pro) which shows lower resistance than their earlier versions (according to WIR based on Canson Infinity papers):

Dead Link Removed


:Niranjan.

 

[nmp]

My thought on pigment printing is changing over time, Salto in relationship with a Japanese company have designed a Pt Pd printer from digital files that I believe lays down on a flat bed design, this is a first step in revolutionizing the market place, I understand the prints are extremely expensive and really we can do just as well or better (double printing) than this unit can.
but I believe its only a matter of time before people (smarter than me) find the desire and market to design multiple hit gum, carbon, pt pt printers that solve all the registration issues but as well allow the artist to use different papers, metals or pigments and create. I keep thinking about screen printing, electrostatic and now this Salto machine.

I hope to be still active and able to experiment with this technology, rather than inkjet it may be some kind of method where the paper absorbs the materials and a digital component moves over top and exposes the image.

I dreamed of Photo Shop capabilities when I was a young printer in the late 70's and early 80's , I now own the laser printers (ink and silver) to work and make images, I think its only a matter of time before the permanent photo print is commercialized by someone like Epson or Durst.

I didn't know what this Salto process was so did some google research on it. Looks like (as I surmise, they don't say it) they are using some sort of UV laser to expose the print from a digital file after coating with the traditional Pt/Pd chemistry and develop the image like you would normally. Kind of like UV Lambda or Lightjet printers. Am I correct?

A promotional video:




:Niranjan.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Really not sure, I am most interested in multiple printing so this device for the moment does not interest me other than curiosity. The light has to be very strong to make this happen so I am out of the loop

 

[nmp]

Latest from Aardenburg comparing Epson K3 vs HD vs Canon Lucia EX....FYI

http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/compare-k3-hd-ex-ink-sets/

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I’ve never seen a color process last forever. We all know even color films fade over time, and even the best RA-4 prints on the best paper will start to noticeably shift color after 50-60 years or so. Even old oil paintings experience aging and have to have restoration work done from time to time.

That being said, I would expect modern pigment prints on good paper to last at least as long as the C-Type prints that so many people treat as the gold standard today, and from what I’ve seen so far, it looks like they will indeed go at least as long if not longer. If not, well, then they last a lot longer than dye based inks, and I’d expect manufacturers to keep at it and keep releasing revisions that improve over the last one until it is permanent enough. Analog processes are how old? Digital processes are how old? By the time digital processes are as old as analog processes are now, they’ll probably far surpass anything in analog land, but I’ll be long gone by then, so won’t know.

Personally, if I really want something to last, I’ll turn it into black and white silver gelatin on a fiber base, then make sure I have a digital version of it in a format that I’m reasonably sure will be readable long into the future, then make sure I have multiple copies of that in as archival of a form as possible. However, I’m a realist. Once I kick the bucket, my kids very well may take all my work and simply dispose of it because it’s not important to them, so for a lot of things, since I’m not a high value super popular art guy and probably never will be, the physical and digital versions only need to last long enough for my successors to either decide to dispose of it or take the digital version and generate a new physical copy on then modern processes and preserve it. The same goes for anything I sell or print for anybody. It’s important to the payer, but once they kick it, will it still be important? Who knows.

bottom linehotographers fade fast than their photographs, so, ink-jet prints only need to last for 6-100 years tops, which hey will! Also, not al photographs deserve to last forever or even a hundred years.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

bottom linehotographers fade fast than their photographs, so, ink-jet prints only need to last for 6-100 years tops, which hey will! Also, not al photographs deserve to last forever or even a hundred years.

Yep, inkjet print by definition means you have a good digital copy to use as a source. Keeping what's important to you in a baseline TIFF 6.0 format (which is effectively public domain knowledge on how to read and display it), if you're still alive when your print fades, it shouldn't be difficult to re-print it on a modern process, or if you've passed on, whoever is responsible for executing your estate will decide if it's worth it to do anything.