Paper Prints
Paper Printing / Paper Prints
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
WORKING DRAFT! This text is a working draft and the elements of it are texts not written by myself, but are all owned by their respective owners. I have copied them to here, to summarize them into my own work and reference them appropriately. Sources are listed below in the sources area.
Light resistance of the printouts
Media to be printed, such as text or image files, can always be displayed on the screen as long as the hardware and software are available. However, the question of the light resistance of printed media arises. There is no material that can protect prints from destruction, fading, in the long term. However, it is possible to influence the life of a printout by precise selection of printer ink and papers. The most important rule here is that the fewer chemicals there are in the paper, coating and ink, the lower the risk that one of the three components mentioned will start to react with each other or with a substance from the environment.
Color changes in printouts
Depending on the amount of light acting on the printout, ink prints can show the first color changes after just a few days, but also after a few years. A particularly important factor here is the paper, which sometimes fades and yellows sooner than the ink printed on it. In this case, the ultra-violet components in the light have an effect on the paper, which sometimes has brighteners that convert the ultra-violet light components into longer wavelength light. These brighteners are supposed to make the paper appear more radiant, whiter, but also bluish. This paper usually becomes yellowish after some time and thus the many optical brighteners cannot be color stable and resistant to aging.
Another aspect of storage is the reaction with gases such as ozone and the evaporation of gases. Experience has shown that printouts should not be stored on new office shelves, as the varnish vapors have a disastrous effect on the printouts after only a few weeks.
Since there are a variety of combinations of inks and media, it is difficult to make general statements about the life and durability of ink prints. Pigment inks usually have a higher light resistance than dye-based inks, so this is the best way to prevent fading of paper. However, a smaller color spectrum must be accepted here.
Inkjet Print Longevity
Even the cheapest current inkjet printer will produce a near perfect print when it’s brand new. The important differences between printers only show up when you change cartridges, leave the machine unused for a couple of months, or look at your prints a couple of years later.
I’ve had a few inkjet printers and I’ve looked many times on Google for good sources of information about them, without ever finding a holy grail. Magazine reviews of the printers always stress their latest features and the official Wilhelm Research longevity tests are conducted under such ideal laboratory conditions they bear little resemblance to real life. I can’t believe such basic information doesn’t exist somewhere on the web, but as I can’t find it, I decided to write my own guide. I was particularly frustrated by my prints fading ridiculously fast, even when shielded from sunlight. Last year my mum, who’s an artist, was also getting concerned about the fading of her digital prints, so I set up my own tests (see below).
SUMMARY
If you have an Epson, your prints won’t fade, but your whole printer may clog up and have to be chucked out if you leave it unused for more than a few weeks. If you have an HP or a Canon, the inks fade because they react with the air, so laminate your prints to stop them fading. Its worth buying the manufacturers own ink cartridges, but not their own papers.
Hewlett Packard, Canon and Lexmark/Dell inkjets heat the ink to boil droplets and project them onto the page. Epson inkjets use piezo elements to vibrate the droplets onto the page. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages.
Hewlett Packard’s domestic printers have the nozzles and heating inkjets built into each ink cartridge, so when you put in a new cartridge, the quality should be literally as good as new. It often isn’t though – because their system requires a large number of electrical contacts all to be perfectly made when a new cartridge is inserted. I’ve had difficulty getting them to print well after changing cartridges whenever I’ve attempted to refill one, and also when using cheap brands of cartridge – I think the problems were due to dodgy electrical connections, though also possibly airlocks. With HP printers, I’ve taken to buying their own brand high capacity cartridges, as they do seem to work well. A big drawback of HPs ‘heating’ system is that the heat affects many of the best dyes so the colours are generally less stable and fade quicker than Epson’s (see test below). An advantage of HPs inks is that they seem naturally resistant to clogging (compared to Epson’s) when the printer is not used for a month or two. And even if a cartridge does clog, a new cartridge has new ink jets, so should restore the printer perfectly.
Epson’s printers come with pre-installed piezo ink heads, so the ink cartridges are simply reservoirs of ink. The problem with their system is that it’s easy to end up with an airlock between the ink and the jet after changing cartridges. (I always had a particular problem with the yellow ink, I think the path for the ink must have been slightly longer).
This airlock is why Epson introduced ‘chipped’ cartridges that alert you before they’re completely empty. This is a good idea, though in order not waste ink, some inkjet cartridge suppliers will sell you a chip re-setter. In my experience this wasn’t successful as the ink then ran out and I never got the printer to run properly again. Epson’s own brand cartridge have an amazingly complicated air vent system inside to release the ink at a controlled rate whatever the temperature or atmospheric pressure - the cheap compatible versions don’t have anything like this. I’m not sure how important this is.
Epson inks are generally much more resistant to fading than HPs as the dyes do not have to be heat resistant. My own tests with their recent ‘long lasting’ pigment based cartridges is impressive. (I did use an Epson with cheap cartridges for a while, and prints from these have faded just as quickly as those from my HP printer.)
Their airlock problem is made worse by the fact that their inks, though longer lasting, are more liable to clog up. The printers have a head cleaning function (this is what makes all the strange noises when you first switch on an Epson) but in my experience this is not always effective. If the inkjets heads are badly clogged, which can happen if there’s an air lock or if the machine is unused for a few weeks, it often means scrapping the whole printer as the heads are built in. There are companies who replace the inkjet heads. I did this once, but it was relatively expensive and the printer failed again within months.
Canon’s printers are similar to HP though the heating inkjet heads are a separate replaceable unit, not built into the ink cartridges. This causes fewer problems with the electrical connections but more with airlocks. Canon printer’s main advantage seems to be that they are particularly fast. I don’t have any experience of Lexmark/Dell inkjet printers.
All manufacturers state the importance of using their own brand papers. HP claim that their papers seal over the dyes to protect them from the air. To test their claims I printed a test strip of primary colours with my HP deskjet 130 (a wide format printer that uses their ‘vivera dye based’ inks) on a variety of different papers, and hung them up in a south facing window for 9 months. Gary Alexander kindly printed the same strip on the same papers with his Epson R800, which uses Epson’s ‘pigment’ based inks.
The results are dramatic. Epson produces colours on all papers that have good resistance to fading, left in the sun for nearly a year. There appears to be little need to buy their own brand paper. The test strips were photographed in daylight with a Canon S85 digital camera.
HP black ink fades really badly, though the other colours aren’t quite as bad. With standard inkjet paper, or artist’s watercolour paper, the black was pale grey after the test. HPs own papers are much better, but no better than the no name brand photo paper. None are a match for the blacks of the Epson, even on plain paper.
SUMMARY
- If you don’t want your prints to fade, buy an Epson and use Epson inks, and then you can use any paper you want.
- If you’re likely to leave your printer unused for a few months, buy an HP or a Canon.
- If you have an HP and want your prints to last as long as possible, print on photo paper, not on inkjet paper. And as I have since found - laminate them immediately (See update below).
- If you don’t want hassle when changing ink cartridges, buy the manufacturers cartridges, not re-manufactured ones or refilled ones – and avoid chip resetters.
HP - Printers
Ink from inkjet printers usually do not last long. The color bleaches out over time You can see it if you enlarge the font with a magnifying glass and note the color value after printing and then compare 2 years later. Even photos that are printed with ink printers bleach out in daylight with time or become yellowish discolored.
20 years ago I had an HP 500. Documents from the time I have Gedruckt the font is now gray colors no longer as intense black as then.
Also photos later printed on photo paper with the HP 500C (C stands for Color) are now slightly yellowish discolored. Often pale or have high color loss so that you can hardly see what used to what color had.
Sources:
- Light resistance - Source: schwarztinte.de
- Color changes - Source: schwarztinte.de
- Inkjet Print Logevity - Sources: Tim Hunkin @ timhunkin.com
- HP - Printers - Sources: Renecap @ gutefrage.net
