Community Newsletter: Q&A: 2/10/06 How long do digital pictures last on paper?
- 2/9/06 4:55 PM
2/10/06 How long do digital pictures last on paper?
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 2/9/06 4:55 PM
Question:
This is along the same lines as the question about the longevity of burned CDs. How long do digital pictures that are printed on paper last? I've always heard that nothing lasts longer than a real photograph printed from a negative because the process burns the print into the layers of the paper as opposed to just putting layers of color lying on top of paper as in digital prints. I have stopped using a negative-producing camera because of the ease of use of the digital camera, but I want to keep my photographs for a long time. Should I revert to the old way of photography for photograph preservation so that future generations can see the past? What is the best way to keep photographs for centuries?
Submitted by: Liz L. of Virginia
Paul C's winning answer
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 2/9/06 5:14 PM
In reply to: 2/10/06 How long do digital pictures last on paper? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Answer:
How long your prints of digital images are going to last depends on the technology used to print them. That includes both ink and paper. Most people use inkjet printers to produce images, and two primary technologies are used. One is based on organic dyes, and the other is based on pigments. Loosely speaking, the first is like coloring your clothes, and the second is like painting your house.
The problem with organic dyes is that they fade. Your clothes fade with washing (and fade really fast if you hang them out in the sun to dry). Chemicals in the environment and ultraviolet radiation are the enemies of organic dyes. This is especially true for red dyes. You may have seen posters that have hung in the window of a store for a long time, and most of the colors other than blue have faded away. Finding a UV-stable red dye is the holy grail of commercial organic chemistry. Canon printers produce glorious output but do so using organic dyes, so they can't be counted on to last unless you keep them in the dark, and then, what's the point?
The paint on your house, however, can stand up to a lot of UV punishment. It tends to lose flexibility, and flakes off, before it loses much color. This is partly because paints use pigments rather than dyes. Epson has several pigment-based printers and estimates that they will produce output lasting for decades to centuries before there is significant loss of color. You might ask why everyone doesn't use pigments and one reason is that it is harder to prevent pigment-based inks from clogging the holes in the print head. Epsons, in fact, have something of a reputation for this problem.
You might also ask how anyone knows that a print will last a century when digital printing technology hasn't even existed for that long. Laboratories do accelerated aging tests -- for example, shine very bright UV light on an image for a short period of time, measure the effect, and extrapolate the results to ordinary situations using some sort of scaling assumptions. In other words, they don't really know. They have an educated guess, based on related data. Accelerated aging tests are something of a dark art, and Wilhelm Imaging Research is the leading wizard (http://www.wilhelm-research.com/). If you're looking for detailed information that is the place to look. But their tests are expensive and some companies aren't willing to pay the price.
It is also worth noting that ink is not the only factor in the equation. Ink sits on paper, and there is a complex and not fully understood chemical interaction between them. What we do know is that the longest lifetimes are obtained by using both ink and paper produced by the same company that made your printer. That also typically means the most expensive ink and paper, but there you go -- it is an interacting system of parts, not a whole bunch of separate and interchangeable pieces. According to Wilhelm, some of the recent HP's achieve lifetimes on the order of 60-70 years even though they use dye-based technology. But that is only for HP ink on HP paper.
So what do you, as a consumer, do? You can look at cNet's reviews but they will not reliably tell you what type of technology each printer uses (a systemic flaw, in my opinion). For what it is worth, the most frequently used printers among photography enthusiats seem to be Epsons, at least judging from their websites.
And also, for what it is worth, film photography has stability problems too. Fading of silver halide photographs was first studied by the Photographic Society of London, which set up its Fading Committee in 1855. The problems identified then have never been fully solved. Fading, then as now, is associated with the accumulation of sulfur compounds from environmental sources but also from the fixer (sodium thiosulphate) bath in photo processing, and careful, thorough washing is required. After proper archival processing, they can last centuries, but few commercial photolabs have ever taken such care with their processing. This is why your family pictures from the 1950's are probably already pretty badly faded.
Color photography is even worse since it involves the use of (yet again!) photosensitive organic dyes. If you keep color photographs stored in a dry, dark chamber at a constant zero degrees Fahrenheit, you can hope to get about 50 years out of a color photo. If you hope to look at them from time to time, lifetimes will be correspondingly shorter. This is why Kodak prints, in bright Kodak yellow on the side of every box of color film: “Since color dyes may change over time, this product will not be replaced for, or warranted against, any change in color.” You can see some examples of faded (and restored) color photographs here:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/~al001/castcorrect.html
Kodachrome is thought to be the most stable color film, but "burning in (whatever that is)" has little to do with it. It is dye chemistry, pure and simple, and always has been, since the Fading Committee first studied the problem.
Submitted by: Paul C. of Atlanta, GA
fading colour prints
by masuk39 - 2/10/06 2:31 AM In reply to: Paul C's winning answer by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I suppose our children and grand children will be thankful that they haven't been lumbered with shoe boxes and albums from this era. The digital prints will probably have faded away to nothing, and let's face it, it's not the end of the world if we don't know what great aunt Emma looked like when she was having a bath at age six.
Enjoy our prints now, and pass them around to friends or email them. That's the great thing about digital photography - we can send these around the world, minutes after they were taken.
I've just finished scanning and adjusting almost 4000 old 35mm colour slides. There has been some fading of reds in the forty year-old prints, soon adjusted with Photoshop, and it's been fun (for me at least) sending some of these away to e-pals.
Adrian
Australia
Saving Photographs of great Aunt Emma
by rover2 - 2/11/06 10:05 AM In reply to: fading colour prints by masuk39Perhaps it isn't really important to know what great Aunt Emma looked like. But ask any number of people who love family history and you will find that they cherish the old photos of great Aunt Emma. So it really does matter that we find a way to store these photos and those of more recent years. Maybe it is because I am 69 years old, that pictures of the past have great meaning and significants to me. So,in my opinion (and I highly regard my opinion) it is very important that we archive and preserve those precious memories, not just for ourselves but for our posterity.
rover2
If archives aren't accessible, they'll be lost..
by MegsL - 2/12/06 5:51 AM In reply to: Saving Photographs of great Aunt Emma by rover2Agreed completely, Rover 2!
I notice many responders on this longevity topic have recommended storing photographs as IT files, not prints, and reprinting them later only when needed using whichever technology is by then available.
This is fine if you're aged twenty or thirty, but it's not such a good suggestion if - like Rover 2, and like me - you have come to digital photography late in life. When you're seventy or eighty, it is not realistic.
I don't expect to be around the place reprinting photographs (or, indeed, doing anything else...) fifteen, twenty or thirty years from now. Nor do I expect surviving descendants to do a research and rescue job on inaccessible archives of mine. They will be much too busy with their own lives, and with images they have created themselves.
No. The photographic records I conserve, edit, process and shortly leave behind me must be accessible to all, that is they must be PRINTED, or they're useless. Hence all this discussion about archival inks and papers.
It's a great discussion, though! My regards to everybody contributing to it -
Thanks
Meg L.
Website to preserve, organize, share, and enjoy your photos
by rover2 - 2/13/06 8:52 AM In reply to: If archives aren't accessible, they'll be lost.. by MegsLHi megsl
Sounds like we are in the same age group and that our photos portray our legacy and that of our ancestors. I hope that you get all your photos archived for your family. I know of a website that is free where they will digitize all your old photos, back them up, send you a CD and they also backup their files daily and archive them in a granite vault. I don't know if I can legally post this site. If you want more info. email me at carolyn.phillips@juno.com
On line storage?
by MegsL - 2/16/06 4:56 PM In reply to: Website to preserve, organize, share, and enjoy your photos by rover2Hi again Rover 2, just seen your post there, and thank you for going to the trouble!
I am interested in the website you mention, but (a) how can its providers lay on such a service for free, and (b) how would one get one's pictures into
such a place and be certain of later generations having the ability - or the enthusiasm - to get them out again?
The problem - as I see it - is that most young people aren't yet interested, and their overworked parents have no time to spare. Most family archiving these days is done by us retired people, and we have to leave things in a state to be usefully picked up and continued by the next generation of retired people.
This seems to me a cogent reason for avoiding high-tech storage solutions, with complicated password access and such. High-tech editing and improvement of pictures is fine. I'm all for that, but once the editing is done I feel most comfortable leaving text and pictures in some obvious place where they'll catch the eye of the casual clearer-upper.
Still, every family is different I guess. Thanks again for your interest, and best regards - Meg.
Pictures
by Perkaset - 2/10/06 2:57 AM In reply to: Paul C's winning answer by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Just keep good backup's of your pictures and they will last forever
digital prints
by danniedee1 - 2/10/06 5:04 AM In reply to: Paul C's winning answer by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Good information. Thank you. As I looked around your answer I found a download for a slide show - it's been easy and fun to use. Best regards from Flower Mound, Texas
How long will they last
by purpled - 2/10/06 5:08 AM In reply to: Paul C's winning answer by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My Dye Sub printer advertises an expected life of 60-70 years or about the same as a photograph.
laminating digital photos
by moonglough - 2/10/06 8:46 AM In reply to: How long will they last by purpledhi everyone
i bought a small laminator (about 9 inches wide) and i laminate the digital photos that i want to display, or pass around, or keep as physical objects. After about a year and a half of doing this, nothing has faded, even things in direct sunlight for a good part of the day. (i have an oldish hp officejet printer and use a variety of paper qualities.)
maryse
laminating color prints
by wileyrg - 2/10/06 12:28 PM In reply to: laminating digital photos by moongloughI have had just the opposite experience. We printed a number of full color images using an older Epson color ink jet, and with the same thought in mind that laminating would preserve, we immediately laminated them. About two years later, they were definitely fading and within a year had to be thrown away.
But beware those plastic sleeves!
by jmbrinck - 2/10/06 3:07 PM In reply to: laminating digital photos by moongloughI haven't tried lamination and am glad it's worked for you, but plastic, paper and ink are not always symbiotic friends. I printed a bunch of digital art on an HP inkjet printer using high grade, heavyweight photo paper. Then I slipped the prints into three-ring plastic sleeves for storage. About a year later I noticed a number of the prints had bled--color was darkened and the images blurred--in other words--they were toast. They even left a negative image on the plastic, and I'd stored them in a cool dark closet. I have no idea what chemically transpired, but since lamination didn't degrade your images I offer that perhaps oxygen played a part in ruining mine. Just throwing it out there for what it's worth.
plastic sleeves=probably polyvinyl chloride
by bimmerpilot - 2/10/06 7:13 PM In reply to: But beware those plastic sleeves! by jmbrinckAbout 20 years ago, I started storing Kodachrome and other brands of 35mm slides in plastic (read polyvinyl chloride) sleeves. Fortunately, I read about the probability of damage to the slides and color changes due to the outgassing from the PVC and threw out those sleeves in favor of archival storage sleeves made from polycarbonate. These are available from a number of sources and are one of the best and least costly methods for slide storage. While I have not stored color prints, either silver halide based or digitally printed, I would think that similar materials made into sleeves for prints would be a satisfactory solution. Just as an aside, I have one color print (silver halide) that has been in a metal frame, behind glass, that has been exposed to ambient light (not direct sunlight) in my office for 30 or more years. It shows serious fading which indicates that exposure to light is probably the worst enemy of color prints of any type.
In a nutshell
by agieryic - 2/10/06 5:10 AM In reply to: Paul C's winning answer by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I stongly believe, if you take your digital prints to a photo-developing store such as Ritz, you're going to get the same good results as you would with prints from negatives. They use the same paper and chemicals to get the print on paper vs using a home printer that uses ink.
Great article!
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