Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: archival, photography, printer | Themes: Digital Cameras
6. Pigmented Inks
Any visit to a museum has introduced you to numbers of paintings created over hundreds of years. Many of those same paintings were done in oils, an artistic medium that has proved itself for its longevity and archival properties. One of the components in many oil paints is natural pigments. These natural pigments can be as elemental as a rock ground so fine as to remain suspended in the oil base of the paint. The pigments can also originate from the carapace of a bug, the ink from a cuttlefish, or natural colorants from plants, such as indigo.
There are benefits to using pigmented inks, other than the longevity factor. Pigments inks tend to sit on the surface of the paper (substrate) and they tend to resist washing out from the surface of that substrate. This surface placement lends itself to a printer using less ink to create the image, whereas the dye-based inks will likely seep further into the fabric of the paper. Because you can vary the particle size in pigmented inks, you can adjust the inks hue and saturation, thus altering how the color of the ink appears to you.
Pigmented inks are water resistant, unlike dye-based inks. In other words, a picture printed with dye-based inks can suffer from a drop of water dripping across the surface. The ink can re-dissolve and start to flow once again. This is not a problem with pigmented inks.
A few notes on buying a printer that uses pigmented inks: Yes, these printers are more costly than their dye-based ink counterparts. For example, the Epson Stylus Photo R1900 sells for about $550. That company’s R2880 costs about $650. The line of pigmented inks—called Epson UltraChrome—costs about $13 per color (and the R2880 needs eight different cartridges). So, the costs do add up. Another popular model is Canon’s Pixma Pro9500 Mark II, which uses Canon’s pigmented inks. Unfortunately, there is no third-party pigmented ink vendor that creates cheaper cartridges for your brand-name printer. That market exists for dye-based ink, but not pigmented ink, so you’re stuck using the pricey name brand.
- Epson T096720...
- Stylus Photo R1900...
- Previous page Dye-based Inks
- Next page Photographic Paper Back in the Day
There are archival class DVD media that have longer warrantied life spans than that mentioned in the article. Taiyo Yuden and TDK offer archive class DVDs' with life span of 70 years which is pretty good don't you think. It is implied that Laser Printers cannot be used for archive class photos, is this really the case?
i would rather see advice on preserving negatives or digital files since we only print when we need it and printing is improving constantly.
This was a really really good article. I remember using Illford photographic paper in college in basic photography. We used an Iris printer for computer graphics printouts. It cost over $50k. I don't know what the shelf life of the prints is. I have them mounted on mat board in a portfolio which is in storage. These days you can make prints that are just as good or better for a lot less money.
You should also mention that when framing a photo it is important to have UV filtering glass, since UV light can fade photos as well.
It would have also been good to include in the article a section about getting the prints done somewhere. For people that will only need to do a small number of photos, the cost of the high end printers/inks might not be worth it. I don't know if places like Wal-Mart offer multiple paper choices, but there are many profession photo printing services available on the internet that give you a range of professional Kodak papers to choose from. These services have the added benefit of using million dollar printing machines which can produce higher quality prints than consumer printers especially if the home user isn't knowledgeable enough to properly calibrate the printer.
Do you have any information on a scalable solution to scan all those photos that you don't have negatives for? I know you can outsource it but since they are irreplaceable I hate mailing them away. Is there a place that you can bring a box of them and they scan them and hand the box back to you?
Very good article. I have a Epson R380 Photo Printer and Epson 4490 Photo Scanner. Both devices work very well for what I use it for. It is a shame that alot of my relatives never kept the negatives as I could have scanned it with my scanner to produce photos for them to keep.
Now these days we all take digital photography for granted. Just point and click. Then take the SD card home to a printer for instant gratification for something that would have taken hours to do. I think doing it the old fashioned way a few times would show true appreciation of photography as it was in the old days.
Case in point, pioneer photographers with monster box size cameras strapped to a donkey on a long trip whereas today we just whip the camera out of our pocket and take a quick snapshot. Boy, times sure have changed! LOL
This should article should have been more prominent on the home page. One of the better written ones this month.
Good article. I would like to second the motion on adding information on getting the prints done by someone else. I am currently using Fotki because they claim to use archival quality inks and paper and I would be interested in seeing how they stack up to other firms. Also, I always thought that you couldn't print your own pictures for cheaper than an outside firm could. There are probably monetary advantages to going with someone else for printing. I think a follow-up article could be very interesting.
You should just go to a real photo lab and have your photos printed if you have any interest in having your prints last a lifetime.
Why give money to the ink cartels? Seriously, they told us 10 years ago our prints would last a lifetime too. Why should we believe them this time around?
Chemistry prints are the way to go.