Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Aj" 
>  The images look pretty good, although ive learned that 
> the ink on the 1280s is very unstable so I hope they 
> look as good in a couple of days. 

Two years ago a friend made some beautiful neutral BW prints for me 
on his 1280 using Epson's heavy Professional Matte paper as part of 
some experiments he was doing with new profiler he had bought.  I 
kept them in a drawer.  Today they are a nice rich shade of 
green.    Around the same time I made some color prints on my 870 
which uses similar inks and printed them on the same paper (but not 
from the same lot).  They've been pinned to my cubicile wall at work 
under fluorescent lights.   And they still look fine.   Go figure.

The most exasperating thing about inkjet prints is that their 
stability properties are a complete crap-shoot.    We can B.S. all 
we want here about ozone and humidity and fluorescent lights and 
paper and glass and whatnot.    I've had prints fade to orange, 
prints fade to green, prints just plain fade, and prints stay rock-
solid-unchanging for years!   I've printed on "professional" inkjet 
paper, brown-paper bags, laser-printer paper, construction paper, 
Canson MiTeintes pastel paper, cloth, gessoed canvas, and it's been 
totally random.  Some of my longest-lasting prints have been on 
totally unconventional materials.

By comparison, my wife and I collect art, and I've got stone-plate 
lithographs made over 100 years ago that look like they were done 
yesterday - the whites are white, the blacks are black and the reds 
and yellows would knock your socks off.