Digital Prints

150
Mastering Digital Printing
What Can Happen?
■ Ink migration, smearing, loss of sharpness, bleeding, and spreading (see Figure 5.2)
■ Changes in density (increase!) and hue shifts with higher humidity
■ Dark storage print life that decreases with higher humidity
■ Stains, mold, and fungal growth with high humidity
Atmospheric Contaminants
Not only are air pollutants such as cigarette smoke, cooking fumes, nitrous oxide, and sulfur
dioxide dangerous for most prints, but ozone levels in possible combination with UV
radiation may also cause severe problems (see “The Dreaded Orange Shift”). And all of
that is exacerbated by open air flow across the face of a print, which is one reason why you
want to frame all prints under glass or acrylic (Plexiglas) or store them in an album or in
sleeves. The resulting problem is also known as “gas fading.”
What Can Happen?
■ Density loss, especially with inkjet dyes vs. pigments
■ In some cases, severe color balance change
Figure 5.2 This group of images
shows the effect of high humidity on
image sharpness. Note how the
enlarged 0.4-mm black line bleeds into
the adjacent background area on
certain resin-coated (RC) papers as the
humidity increases. From a study by
Creative Memories; printed with dyebased
inks on an Epson Stylus Photo
890 printer.
Courtesy of Dr. Mark Mizen/Creative
Memories