Digital BW, The Print

>As far as life of the MIS-VM prints are concerned I only see
>49 years on the MIS web site.

>And isn't Ultrachrome rated on watercolor paper rated at
>90-100? What am I missing here?

I think that the old yellow pigment limited the MIS Archival inks to a 49
year life.  None of that pigment is used in the VM inkset.

Take a look at the graphs from RIT at
http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm?source=html/rit.html.

The old yellow hit the 65% "end point" RIT uses at "49" years.  The graphs
shown only go to "50" years.  But at that point, the black ink is at about
89%.  After the initial relatively rapid fading and warming, the black fades
very slowly.  All the tests I've done and seen show that pigments (not dyes)
go into a linear, slow fade pattern after in initial fast fade/warming
stage.  So, you can probably extrapolate the black ink curve from the slope
you see between the 35 and 50 year marks.  If this is done, the life of that
ink would be multiples of the yellow ink and the 49 years RIT rated the
yellow at.

In short, I think the VM inkset has a very long display life.

At some point I'll have the time to put the new Epson inks in the fader with
some of the other inks we use.

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com