Digital BW, The Print

I enter this thread by saying that I use the Library of Congress standard for archival life, which is 100
years.

Next I will say that it is really still too early in this very young technology to know how long *any* of
these inks and papers combinations will last.  There is an international
'committee' (made up of various manufacturers, technology groups etc. (and I think govts.) that has set out to
study this very complex problem and is trying to  set up international
standards.  They have broken the study up into various sub committees to study each aspect.  These
subcommittees are:
1: Water Fastness
2: Humidity Fastness
3: Thermal Degredation/Dark Stability
4: Indoor Light Stability
5: Outdoor Light Stability
6: Fingerprint Test
7: Other brittleness and Image Analysis
8: Gas Fading

The above includes the studies of papers, including (but not limited to): coatings, brighteners, rag and other
content, acid levels and buffering agents...And how these all react with
inks...Both pigment and dye.

The earliest indications are that the paper needs to be acid free and contain as little buffering agents as
possible (this would leave out any wood pulp papers, and but would include
100% rag papers).  The papers should not contain *any* optical brighteners, as they are inherently unstable.
And that it appears that the only stable ink materials are pigment, but that
when they get the pigments small enough to fit in inkjet printers, the pigmnts start to react more like
unstable dyes (having something to do with decreasing the mass of the particle to its
surface area.

The above stated, I put forth the following:

The only acceptable papers that I presently know of are:
Crane's Museo
Epson's, Fine Art Smooth (made by Crane for Epson)
Hawk Mountain's top line of papers (I'm sorry, but I don't have the specific name of their best papers).

They are all 100% rag, acid free, have minimal calcium carbonate buffering agents, are coated for inkjet ink
acceptance, and have no optical brighteners.

Also:  The most stable inks are 100% pigment.  There are a few different ones out there, the most promising
being the 'Indelible Ink' line, which has the best gamut and shows the
smallest amount of metamerism.  I have seen them, they look good.  I don't have any test results regarding
their stability, beyond tests performed by the beta testers.  Some of the beta
testers have a great deal of knowledge in the inkjet/paper field.

Stability?  Longevity?  Archival?  Too soon to know.  At this point, all we can go with is our best guess, and
wait and see.  All the desires in the world will not answer our questions any
sooner...The problem with being in the forefront of a new technology.

An interesting read is the thesis: 'Stability Issues and Test Methods for Ink Jet Materials, Barbara Vogt,
Department of Image Engineering, University of Applied Science, Cologne'

The URL of the 62 page PDF is:
http://www.geocities.com/mortenryhl/index.html


Harvey Ferdschneider
Partner, SKID Photography, NYC