Digital BW, The Print

These are all valid and interesting points to be considered.

I feel the problem with OBA's is like most of the issues a digital 
print maker has to face, it is not
subject to an easy correct answer.

I will begin my diatribe with my own observations.

I print for photographers and other artists as a living and try to be 
as on top of all the things that
affect this enterprise, don't even get me started about how pigmented 
inks scuff on cotton papers.
I test every paper I print on with each ink that becomes part of my 
system. One of my tests is the
south window facing the California sun test. This is where I first 
encountered the problems with OBA's.
One of the worst offenders of drastic color change due to OBA's was 
with Epson Enhanced Matte. The images
where often very stable on this paper but the paper itself changed from 
a bright white to a deep yellow in as little as
a month in the California sun.

Other papers that where Bright white did not change as radically, and 
some showed practically no changes.

It turns out that some papers have some OBA's in the paper base itself, 
some have OBA's in the inkjet receptive coating,
and some have OBA's in both components.

Furthermore an OBA is not a single specific compound. Many chemical 
substances exhibit florescence.

Not all very white papers necessarily even have OBA's some are just 
very bleached, and some are blue, a very ugly way
of dealing with the situation in my opinion.

Then we get to canvases, all inkjet canvases are treated like 
traditional artist canvas in that  the natural color of the canvas is 
behind
a coating similar in concept to gesso. Just look at the back. These 
coating can be anything under the sun.

Don't just buy into something someone else proclaims like, "never use a 
paper with OBA's" I have dye based prints I made
on my first Iris printer that have not "faded to nothing in three 
years" that are over 10 years old.

Find a combination that looks good, do some actual tests with it, and 
bear in mind what the real world situations are likely to be.
I do still make exhibition prints on EEM if I think it's appropriate.

The most important thing is to actually make prints.

J.Z.