Community Newsletter: Q&A forum: 2/10/06 How long do digital pictures last on paper?

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

Perhaps 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

Hi 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

Just keep good backup's of your pictures and they will last forever

My Dye Sub printer advertises an expected life of 60-70 years or about the same as a photograph.

I 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.

About 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.

I had the opportunity to test two ink jet printers, Canon's bubble jet, and HP's 1350 all in one.
I printed the same picture on both. Both were hung onto the fridge.
The HP had strongly faded within 2 weeks, the Canon print was seemingly unaffected within the same time frame.
I am not suggesting to prefer one over the other.
The Canon clogged up after 12 months of usage because I used Best Buy generic replacement ink, and the HP's scanner glas broke when I put a book on top of it.
Anyway, it appears that the organic ink used by Canon is somewhat superior.

Paul's response was very informative and interesting. He should be a chemistry teacher.

Paul gives a great report on how long digital pics will last, maybe a bit long but good never the less.

I would suggest you place your photos on a disk for storage, and when you want to reproduce them go to, Costco, Wal-mart or a store like that. Then when they fade go back and reproduce them.

Paul's answer is absolutely correct, but omits one important piece of information, and that is regarding the ink receiving layer of photo base inkjet papers.

Some photo inkjet papers would appear to dry instantaneously, and some inkjet papers take longer to dry, which at first glance would indicate that the instant-dry papers are superior. That is not necessarily the case.

Instant dry photo papers are, in industry language, called "microporous" or "nanoporous", which means that their receiving layers are made up of nanometer sized chunks of ceramic. The gaps in between these ceramic chunks is what both dye and pigment inks fill into, thereby the billions of these pores into which billions of ink droplets rest creates the images we call inkjet prints.

Paul's comment that airborne gases have a direct effect on dye-based inkjet prints is correct, as well as the effects UV light. What happens on a microporous print is that both the dyes (or pigments)are openly exposed to the air, where such gases can do their destructive work. That is why if a dye based inkjet print hung in a hair salon or a newly painted room can fade rather quickly. To minimize the effects of dye destruction, either lamination or putting the image behind glass will help, although UV damage can continue, depending on the UV absorption characteristics of the laminate or glass.

Even though pigment inks on these same microporous papers are subject to the same conditions of gases and UV light, they are as immune to these effects as Paul's example of a painted house.

So, why use dye inks at all? The answer is that dyes still offer the capability of a wider color gamut and better saturation than pigment inks, although the performance gap between pigments and dyes is rapidly closing with the pigment inks available today. Dyes in general are also less expensive.

Thus, we turn back to the inkjet papers which take a longer time to dry. There is a valid reason to choose these papers instead. Typically, those papers are coated with polymers rather than ceramic crystals. When an ink droplet strikes a polymer, it absorbs into the polymer, in a matter not too dissimilar to how a drop of water on Jello mix. It will swell the polymer due to its "wetness", and as it dries, the polymer actually encapsulates the dye in itself, thus rendering the dye immune to the damage of airborne gases. Polymer prints using dye inks will easily will last more than twice as long as microporous dye prints, relative to gas fading. However, the dyes on a polymer print continue to be subject to UV fading. Although polymer prints do not require lamination or being put behind glass to avoid gas fading, doing so can help prevent UV damage, again depending on the kind of laminate or glass used.

Also, dyes are improving in their fade resistance at the same rate as pigment inks are improving in their gamut and saturation. It will only be a matter of time before both technologies come so close in performance that fading "fades" as an issue.

The bottom line is that inkjet prints, even the faded ones are replaceable and can be restored to their original brilliance by simply reprinting them. So relax and enjoy your images. 0's and 1's never fade.

Nelson S.

Paid over $400 for this all-in-one. Picture printing quality was quite poor. I had been attracted by the big, refillable ink tanks. But when the first tank was empty, the printhead failed($200 replacement cost).
I figure my cost-per-page was about $2.00 on plain paper. I got about 200 pages out of it.

After suffering through a couple of costly Lexmarks, the Brother had looked like a good solution. Not so.

I then bought a used Canon BJC6000. Separate, reasonably priced printheads with refillable separate inktanks. Worked great, but eventually developed paper-handling woes.

Next purchase was an HP Business Inkjet 1200d. Separate printheads($34 each) and separate ink tanks($34 each, also). Very decent photos, but not ultra-fine print quality. This printer has proven to be a super-reliable workhorse, really pouring out the work. Ink costs were already low because of the generous size of the HP ink tanks.

NOW, my ink costs are Super-SUPER-low due to installation of a "continuous-ink" system. This is a set of custom inktanks that install where the original ink cartridges sat, connected by plastic tubing to large external ink tanks sitting on the desk. Ink is fed to the printer through these tubes, resetting the ink-level reader on the printer everytime I print.

Had this setup for about a year, and it works fantastic! I have since also purchased two HP 1100d's from eBay auctions. These printers are a very good investment.

My pigment-printing Epson is sitting in the store room, replaced by ah HP. Reason: Unless it was used almost every day, the Epson clogged, smeared pigment, and found new ways to ruin very expensive 13"x19" prints, every time I used it.

I'm going to fit the Epson with MIS inks for black and white printing, but the HP is far more convenient, reliable, and the prints are absolutely stunning.

YMWV,
Joe

For what it's worth, my Epsom 777, purchased July 2001, has never clogged, and I rarely use it. I've gone months in between printing without a problem. I've used Epsom cartridges, brand x, and even used a refill kit. I think I ran the "print head cleaner utility" once a few years ago because I had some spots. What problem???

I have two Epsons - an Epson 2200 and an Epson 200 - and although I use the 2200 maybe once a week and the 200 maybe two or three times per month, I've only had perhaps two clogs over the past couple of years (the 2200 is several years old and the 200 is roughly 18 months). Perhaps some of the reasons other folks are having clogging problems may be 1) the type of paper, 2) the PPI/DPI they are printing out at and 3) the heat/humidity in the room where the paper and printers are stored.

Just some thoughts!