Digital BW, The Print

Mark,

Of course the easiest way to check is to see if that old black light 
is in the back of the closet somewhere. Black light will cause the 
OBA's (Optical Brightening Agents) to fluoresce like crazy and it 
would be easy to tell. Personally I think that LPM does have a strong 
dose of OBA's. It is just too bright to be plain paper and has a 
slight blue cast.

In the "Files" section under Paper Data I put up a file with some 
information Robert Rex of Crane posted on in a reply awhile back, 
that may help.

I suspect that the brightness of the OBA's will be so appealing they 
will be very popular. They help to off set the weak blacks of the 
pigmented inks on matte paper. The life of the OBA is going to be 
dependent upon exposure to light so in dark storage it may last a 
very long time. In sunlight or other high UV lights it will lose its 
ability to fluoresce and the paper will no longer be as bright. The 
OBA's may yellow with age as well. Jerry has reported the EAM in his 
window tests yellows slightly but objectionably. This is probably the 
OBA being exhausted.

If you want to stay away from the OBA's then you are going to have to 
settle for a paper that is not as white. Silver fiber paper is about 
as white as Museo for instance.

Then of course there is the whole question of the life of the inkjet 
receiver coatings being used and how they will hold up with time.

I think there may be too many unknowns and we are going to drive 
ourselves crazy trying to predict what is going to happen to these 
papers over the decades, hopefully centuries. Put some of the papers 
you like in the sun and see what you think after a few weeks.

Martin



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Mark Tucker" <mark@m...> 
wrote:
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., daviddstock@e... wrote:
> > Hi, Tyler, and all. Yes, I just bought a 7000, and am joining the 
> > arduous search for paper-ink combos for grayscale printing. 
> > One small piece of information: I just got off the phone with a 
> > Legion Paper rep.
> 
> Can anyone confirm that Legion Matte actually HAS optical 
> brighteners in it? After reading this thread, I cancelled an order 
> from MediaStreet for LegionMatte, for fear of fading due to the 
> brighteners. Cannot find any info about it on Legion's site:
> 
> http://www.legionpaper.com/digital/media.htm
> 
> Are we in agreement that optical brighteners are bad news as a 
> general rule? I do not know for sure.  -Mark Tucker