Digital BW, The Print

Cathy Van Berg wrote:

>... it has been well established in the Piezo3000 group that Epson
>Archival Matte is not Archival at all.  There was much discussion
>...it is important to me that all my work be as acid free as possible...

There has been more discussion than evidence, I fear.  Also, the "green"
problem of Piezo on EAM is, in my view, not a problem of the paper.

I would also feel better if EAM clearly indicated a basic (acid free) pH
with my acid test pen.  However, there appears to be a lot more to the
science than what these marking pens will show.  When newsprint tests out as
better than my archivally-processed silver prints, and I see no correlation
between acidity and light-fastness, it makes me wonder if these cheap pens
have any value at all.

At any rate, I continue to think that color shifting and fading are more of
a problem than what happens several hundred years from now.  So far, among
the papers I've tested, EAM seems to be the best in terms of light fastness,
at least for relatively pure pigment inksets like the MIS archival inks.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com