Digital Prints

Who’s Doing the Testing?
There are three kinds of groups doing print permanence testing and making permanence
claims: independent testing organizations and researchers, manufacturers and marketers, and
individual photographer-artists.
Testing Organizations and Independent Researchers
These are the scientists, the university-based, non-profit research laboratories, and the
independent labs that do the most well-publicized testing of print permanence.
Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR)
Henry Wilhelm (see Figure 5.8) is the dominant figure in both photographic and now
digital print permanence testing. He wrote the ground-breaking book The Permanence
and Care of Color Photographs (1993), he is on the key industry standards committees
(ISO) and panels, and he is a consultant on image permanence to such prestigious institutions
as the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR) is based in the college town of Grinnell, Iowa, and does
both independent contract testing on prototype materials for companies as well as generic
testing for public consumption. When you see permanence claims made by ink vendors
or inkjet printer makers, there’s a good chance that WIR did the tests from which the
results were drawn.
For the lightfastness portion of its well-known Display Permanence Ratings (see Table 5.1),
WIR runs accelerated, measured, predictive testing based on continuous, high-intensity
light exposure (35 klux with glass-filtered cool white fluorescent illumination) conducted
at 24° C and 60% RH. Using Wilhelm’s visually-weighted criteria set, the results are then
Chapter 5 ■ Determining Print Permanence 163
Figure 5.8 Image-stability researcher
Henry Wilhelm at the Maine Art
Gallery in Kennebunk.
© 2000 Mark H. McCormick-Goodhart