Do all color prints fade?

Bruce Watson · May 30, 2009

Bruce Watson said:
... and a guy in Maryland who's name I can't remember right off who's actually doing testing correctly -- getting fade and delta-e both for all the inks and inks in combination, and older photographic print processes too like RA-4 (at least I seem to recall that he's going to be testing RA-4 and some other processes to get comparisons). A lot of people in the industry think he's got his act together. If I can find his URL I'll append it when I find it -- he's the most interesting of the lot IMHO.

That name I couldn't remember last night is Aardenberg.

Photo Engineer · May 30, 2009

I will try to address several things in one post.

1. The Ctein article was published and is not on APUG. Try either google or write to Ctein. I have mislaid my copy (sorry Ctein, but then I virtually memorized it. )

2. Pigments have their problems too being often composed of heavy metals such as Lead, Cadmium and etc... So one must be careful. Pigments made from dyes are not classically pigments and will fade. They may also be toxic.

3. That would be Henry Wilhelm of the Wilhelm Institute. I met Henry when he gave his first talk on this subject in the 80s in Washington. Offhand, I forget where he is located. There are still arguments about his methodology as he uses only high intensity (500 fc) fade rather than the low intensity fade (100 fc) preferred by some and therefore his tests vary from some done by others. There are ANSI standards and the RIT Image Stability lab in Rochester (or Image Permanance Lab - I forget the exact title of the lab) does a lot of image stability testing on quite a few types of products.

PE

ann · May 30, 2009

i have several color prints, which i printed myself from a negative in 1984. They have been sitting in a box (archival) since that time. Once in awhile i bring them out to show some students the difference between them and some color prints made on Cibachrome in 1983 (in the same box) The prints made from the negatives are fading , the cibachromes look basically the same.

just my personal experience.

sanking · May 30, 2009

ann said:
i have several color prints, which i printed myself from a negative in 1984. They have been sitting in a box (archival) since that time. Once in awhile i bring them out to show some students the difference between them and some color prints made on Cibachrome in 1983 (in the same box) The prints made from the negatives are fading , the cibachromes look basically the same.

just my personal experience.

That is basically my experience also. All of the C and R color prints that I made in the 1980s with Kodak papers have faded, even when stored in the dark. On display they all faded within a few years. Cibachrome prints that I made in the same period appear to be in very good shape. Tri-color carbon prints I made during this period are also in very good shape.

The use of inkjet printers that use pigmented dye sets is very new, and the technique is evolving. Even so I feel very confident that color prints I made on my Epson 3800 will be much longer lived than the C and R prints I made back in the 80s.

Sandy King

wildbill · May 30, 2009

Here's an informative essay from Joseph Holmes' site I read recently:
http://www.josephholmes.com/processes.html
scroll down to permanence.

railwayman3 · May 31, 2009

sanking said:
That is basically my experience also. All of the C and R color prints that I made in the 1980s with Kodak papers have faded, even when stored in the dark. On display they all faded within a few years. Cibachrome prints that I made in the same period appear to be in very good shape. Tri-color carbon prints I made during this period are also in very good shape.

Sandy King

By co-incidence, I spent this afternoon looking through a large box of prints from my late mother's house. Professional studio B&W from the early 1900's to about 1940 look substantially "as new", as do most of the amateur B&W through to the 1960's.
A large proportion of the color prints from the 70's and 80's, from neg and a few reversal, show deterioration, even some of those processed by Kodak. Several sets from the mid-1990's (processed by one of the large mail-order companies) are fading very badly to blue.
Storage has been dry and in-the-dark, normal UK domestic temparatures.

Photo Engineer · May 31, 2009

Prints from that era fading blue is quite unusual IIRC. They usually faded red when they went.

PE

railwayman3 · May 31, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
Prints from that era fading blue is quite unusual IIRC. They usually faded red when they went.

PE

Yes, I thought it was odd....I wondered if it was some sort of one-off problem in the processing as the prints were from two-or-three films taken at the same time. I could see nothing unusual in the storage conditions, spare room in ordinary house, dry, no fumes, or chemicals, household or otherwise.

Photo Engineer · May 31, 2009

What marking is on the back? I can check on it.

Im curious as I know that there were non-Kodak papers that faded blue, but you said "Kodak". Kodak had just patented a new method of stabilzing a new type of yellow dye, so they were quite good at that time.

PE

Aurum · May 31, 2009

IIRC from a lot of the colour material I had printed at the time (80's) there was a lot of Fuji paper used in the UK. Certainly all the photo processors I used in the Midlands used Fuji, and gave away free films (126 cartridges in my case back then-that dates me ) which also came in Green Boxes

That said, I had a quick look, and they still appear OK to me

railwayman3 · Jun 1, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
What marking is on the back? I can check on it.

Im curious as I know that there were non-Kodak papers that faded blue, but you said "Kodak". Kodak had just patented a new method of stabilzing a new type of yellow dye, so they were quite good at that time.

PE

I've just rechecked...there are 3 distinct sets of prints which have faded to blue, all processed (by a large UK mail order lab) in 1994 on Agfa RC paper. My guess is that there was some sort of one-off processing fault.

Prints on Kodak paper from the 1990's all still look good.

Photo Engineer · Jun 1, 2009

That sounds more "normal". Agfa paper never instituted the corrective fade methods as far as Kodak and Fuji did. In order, I would say that in descending order of stability Kodak=Fuji=Ilfochrome, Konica, Agfa, Ferrania=3M. This is a very rough approximation. Early versions of Kodak products (50s) had whites that turned orange, later products went reddish and now they fade rather neutrally.

PE

mrladewig · Jun 1, 2009

If all you knew of archival properties came from this discussion, you'd think that the only paintings in museums were B&W from this talk. I'm not claiming that this color artwork doesn't face issues over its lifetime, but its certainly possible to create color pigment artwork that will last for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Part of this discussion is the old bias that only B&W photography is tested and proven to last. Part of it is the newness of color and the fact that some of our experiments in the color photography processes have not held up particularly well.

Ultimately I think that pigment color inkjet will prove to have a longer lifespan than other dye based systems, but that medium is in its infancy right now. Creating a setup where the CMYK pigment + solvent + encapsulation can be shot out of a nozzle is a design challenge that may not allow for the most flexibility in choosing the pigments themselves. Perhaps our choices in cyan, magenta and yellow pigments are not as stable as other colors like red, orange, green and blue and maybe we will see some change in the inkjet pigment palettes in the future.

Photo Engineer · Jun 1, 2009

Mrladewig;

There is no assumption whatsoever that paintings in museums are B&W. Quite the contrary, we know that they are color and consist of pigments, and that they last a long time. Unfortunately, classic pigments are toxic and include red lead, yellow cadmium, red and orange mercury and etc. So, you see that modern pigments cannot be chosen from classic pigments.

In addition, pigments cannot be ballasted to remain in place in the print in the same manner that chromogenic dyes can. Therefore, they are subject to wandering and image blur.

Color and B&W are, in fact, tested to distruction by many companies and the lifetimes can be estimated. There is no real measure possible except real time tests lasting hundreds of years.

PE

railwayman3 · Jun 1, 2009

mrladewig said:
If all you knew of archival properties came from this discussion, you'd think that the only paintings in museums were B&W from this talk. I'm not claiming that this color artwork doesn't face issues over its lifetime, but its certainly possible to create color pigment artwork that will last for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Just looking at a list of the relative permanence of artists watercolors, the most permanent seem to be those using simple mineral- and metal-compound-based pigments, while the least permanent are those with natural or sythetic organic pigments, particular the more delicate colors.

All modern photo processes use complex organic dyes, and the choice of dyes to use is particularly restricted to those which are of the exact colors needed, which can be formed during processing and the components of which are sufficiently stable, economical, not-too-poisonous, etc, etc., to be incorporated into emulsions and processing chemicals.

wildbill · Jun 3, 2009

wildbill said:
Here's an informative essay from Joseph Holmes' site I read recently:
http://www.josephholmes.com/processes.html
scroll down to permanence.

I'm curious, anyone have a response to this?

StorminMatt · Jun 4, 2009

railwayman3 said:
Just looking at a list of the relative permanence of artists watercolors, the most permanent seem to be those using simple mineral- and metal-compound-based pigments, while the least permanent are those with natural or sythetic organic pigments, particular the more delicate colors.

All modern photo processes use complex organic dyes, and the choice of dyes to use is particularly restricted to those which are of the exact colors needed, which can be formed during processing and the components of which are sufficiently stable, economical, not-too-poisonous, etc, etc., to be incorporated into emulsions and processing chemicals.

This pretty much says it all, especially that the dyes used in film must be formed during processing. This is probably the most important factor here, as it pretty much rules out the use of highly stable, metal-based dyes (like, say, iron oxide for reds). This is also a BIG reason why inkjet prints have the potential to be MUCH more long-lasting than traditional prints: dyes are simply sprayed on, and are therefore NOT restricted to colorless compounds that take on color after processing.

Speaking of dyes, does anyone know the exact nature of the dyes that are used when processing Kodachrome?

Photo Engineer · Jun 4, 2009

Matt;

Please read my previous post on this. To summarize, Lead and Cadmium were used and preferred for pigment dyes, and things can be done to stabilze organics.

As for the Kodachrome dyes, yes, I know what they are and you can see them as well. They are in a patent by R. Bent and R. Mowrey.

PE

Do all color prints fade?

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