Digital BW, The Print

Jim,

You wrote:

>... I ran some tests where ...
>The UV sprayed prints had warmed less in all cases.

I am moving slowly in the direction of sprays.  However, it's not a fun
process, and I worry about possible long-term detrimental effects.  I think
archivalists (and at one point Wilhelm) have cautioned people about sprays.
On the other hand, the fading is, as best I can tell, mostly an oxidation
process.  The sprays simply help isolate the pigment from the oxygen.  Epson
did the same thing in designing its pigs, coating each particle with
polymer, as I understand it.

> Still, the unsprayed strip in the
>box became warmer than the sprayed strip in the box.

I have not noticed warming with my dark-storage strips -- yet.  Again,
however, it's the oxygen that does it.  The light, heat, humidity, etc. just
appears to accelerate the process.  So, dark-storage prints should
ultimately warm.

Note also that air-borne pollutants have been identified by RIT and others
as a huge threat to prints -- inkjet and silver.  The sprays or other method
to isolate the pigments from air and pollution might really help our inkjet
prints.

My in-laws in Sun City West, AZ, (smokers in a new house with lots of
out-gassing and windows kept closed during the long summer to keep out the
heat) had some identical RC silver prints to what I had in cooler
California.  The Sun City West prints deteriorated amazingly fast, whereas
we saw no deterioration of the California prints.

(Perhaps related, the in-laws are now deceased.  I religiously take my
anti-oxidant supplements.  Maybe I ought to consider topical application of
a UV spray -- actually, the sunscreen I use is just that!)

> ...As a VERY generalized
>statement, the brighter white the paper base, the sooner the warming
>would start and the more intense it generally became.

In addition to the ink warming, the bright white papers have UV brighteners
in them that burn out and yellow (or cause the paper to look relatively
yellow due to the absence of the bluish brighteners).  These might be
unrelated processes.  Although, some think that the brighteners do shorten
archival life.

>I replicated the effects somewhat with MIS VM inkset, although the Two
>warm curves were much more susceptible to warming than the colder
>curves.

Jerry Olson and I have also noticed that the cooler prints warm less.  The
cyan pigment that I use to cool the native warm black pigments seems to give
a protective effect that might even go beyond the cyan pigment's own
superior resistance to the problem.

> I have never found an
>ink/paper combo that didn't warm in my limited testing.

Jim, if you are using the new FS-N, try a comparison south-window test with
it and let us know if I've made any progress for your environment.  (I
haven't even fade tested the production inks yet myself.)

Paul
http://www.PaulRoark.com