What is a Crystal Archive Print?

I saw an image by Philip Di Lorca and it said it was a Fujicolor

Crystal Archive print mounted to plexi. What is that and what effect

does mounting on Plexi have?

thx/Tim

It is used in many other machines as well, such as the Noritsu.

It is exposed by light (LEDs) digitally to create a C print. It is far superior to any inkjet

or dyesublimation print I have seen.

Well, Fuji's Crystal Archive paper can be exposed to light by any photographic process you desire. You can print in an optical enlarger from C-41, C-22, or whatever process color negative you like. You can expose in a digital printer, where they are exposed by red, green, and blue lights, digitally modulated, provided by wither lasers or light-emitting-diodes. With a digital printer, the source can be scanned negative film, scanned transparency (slide) film, or a pure digital source. The exposed paper is developed using the RA-4 process.

It is the most stable chromogenic silver-based color printing material presently available. It is one of the reasons that Kodak has lost market share in the portrait photography business, their Ektacolor papers were spectacularly unstable, leaving a lot of unhappy customers.

Mounting it on plexi is an odd choice. There are reasons that acid-free rag mat board is preferred.

<i> It is far superior to any inkjet or dyesublimation print I have seen.</i><p>

These blanket statementts are kind of ridiculous.<p>

It depends on what you want your prints to look like and what you want to do with them. For example, you may want a more "alternative process" look and use a highly textured inkjet paper for your print. Impossible with FCA. Or you may want to put together a one-off or very small run short book of photographs. Very easy with some inkjet papers. You may want an "old time" yellowed paper look, also easy with at least one inkjet paper.<p>

Photography isn't about a bunch of absolutes, it's about what you want to do with it.

Amen.

Fuji Crystal Archive *glossy* beats the inkjets in terms of raw color intensity range, and FujiFLEX is more insane yet. All materials that can't be mimmicked by any ink process I've seen.

Once it comes to printing on non-glossy materials though, the ink-jets win. Much better Dmax, and they don't dull down to the extreme that the RA4 papers do when printed on lustre surfaces. Non glossy Fuji Crystal Archive is a waste of time if you ask me. The Epson's do a much better job on lustre papers.

Kodak's Ektacolor papers had the same archival characteristics as an open box of breakfast cereal. Their first generation RA4 papers weren't much better.

"It is far superior to any inkjet or dyesublimation print I have seen.

These blanket statementts are kind of ridiculous."

What's ridiculous is for you to disagree.