Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
Catalytic Fading
There are even more obscure ways for prints to fail. One is called “catalytic fading,” where
two or more inkjet inks in combination may fade quickly, even if the individual ink components
wouldn’t on their own.
Poor Handling
And finally, folding, creasing, smudging, scraping, fingerprinting plus poor display and
storage procedures—all are possible, and all can reduce the permanence of prints (especially
with inkjet prints that do not generally have a protective coating).
Determining Permanence:
Standards and Tests
With some notable exceptions—when British painter J.M.W. Turner was accused by paint
manufacturer William Winsor for using fugitive pigments, he allegedly responded, “It’s
your business to make paints; it’s my business to use them”—artists, collectors, and curators
have been concerned about image permanence for many, many years. According to
artist and educator Bruce MacEvoy, English chemist Walter Russell and amateur painter
Capt. William de W. Abney published a report in 1888 (Report on the Action of Light on
Watercolors) that put to rest the debate about whether watercolors faded under certain
kinds of light. They did.
Why Test?
As with many areas of human endeavor, knowledge about print permanence can be gained
from scientific testing. Just like dropping feathers and apples from tall buildings to investigate
the effects of gravity, tests can help explain real-world phenomena if they’re carefully
constructed and performed under accepted standards. Once you have an idea of what
can cause the deterioration of a print (the “hypothesis”), you can test for it.
Image-quality researcher Mark McCormick-Goodhart believes a well-designed test: (1)
provides insight into what we can expect to happen over time, (2) helps to delineate how
products compare and what products are best-suited to a particular application, and (3)
helps end-users create appropriate storage and display conditions.
Types of Tests
Print permanence tests fall under several broad categories:
Accelerated vs. Real-Time Testing
Accelerated testing exposes a printed sample or specimen to much higher levels of light or
whatever is being tested than would occur under normal conditions. This simulates in a
short amount of time any deleterious effects, if any, that a print might experience.
Real-time testing, on the other hand, just lets the test run over the course of weeks,
months, or even years under normal display or storage conditions. (There is a variation of