Film v digital. Printed image colour fastness

[Keitht]

Just been reading a review of colour inkjets in March PCPro. They are saying that colour fades badly within a few months if images aren't stored under glass. I appreciate that you can always reprint but what is members' experience with colour fastness or otherwise from inkjets ? Conventional photo prints will obviously also fade after long periods in bright light but 'a few months' for inkjet prints does seem short. Good quality paper plus inks isn't cheap.

[Alan Roberts at work]

Indeed. All of my print work for the past 18 months is in folders or in plastic sleeves. I've noticed no degradation at all yet. I'd like to hear more from other users, I print with an Epson Stylus Photo 750, Epson inks, Epson papers (720dpi for bulk, gloss for quality).

[John Farrar]

I understand there are inks now available which, it is claimed, will cause the image to last for 100 years! Whether it be a photograph or digital print, light will always be the image's worst enemy.

[Alan Roberts at work]

An interesting mathematical point here.

If a manufacturer publishes a claim that a print will last for n years, what does it mean? Since dyes fade at a constant rate, they must have defined a "minimum quality" beyond which the print is "unusable". I might not agree on that definition; if I'm more critical then I might define the limit as n/2 years, or if less, as 2n years. When n is a small quantity, like a few months, it hardly matters because it's gone soon anyway, but when the numbers get big, like 100 years, we're looking at a huge spread of acceptability criteria.

Hmmm. Perhaps time for the dried frog pills again.

[Gladders]

Ahh! You're the reason frogs are becoming endangered. They'll be introducing an anti frog hunting with dogs bill in parliament after the election, you mark my words.

Paul

[Alan Roberts at work]

Ho hum. I must stop throwing out coded Pratchett references http://www.dvdoctor.net/cgi-bin/ubb/wink.gif

[tom hardwick]

Er- I can't find the reference to this in my Epsom Stylus instruction book...

[Alan Roberts at work]

At risk of getting very silly, my printer was made by Epson, the horses race at Epsom. And Terry Pratchett's Bursar of Unseen University has to take dried frog pills to keep him remotely conneted with the Disc World reality. But he's damn good at maths even when he's floating off.

For anyone who hasn't yet come to grips with these characters, I recommend them. They got me through many hours of sleepless nights before and during my major gut problems of a year or so ago, from which I still haven't properly recovered (3 specialists in 4 months, and still no diagnosis after CT, chest Xray, ultrasonics and poking telescopes into orifices that I thought weren't big enough for them, not bad going).

[This message has been edited by Alan Roberts at work (edited 24 January 2001).]