How long do Inkjet prints take to fade?

[dick roadnight cotswolds]

When I told the Manager of the lab that I was thinking of selling

inkjet prints, he told me that they would only last a year in

sunlight, so I asked HP...

 

The following table lists independent results achieved using HP photo

papers and either the HP Deskjet 900 series or Photosmart series

printers which both use the No. 78 tri-color print cartridge. Fade

resistance values for HP Inkjet printers using other tri-color print

cartridges, such as No. 23, have not been established at this time,

but the values will be shorter than those listed below.

 

HP photo paper product HP colorfast photo paper, glossy

product numbers C7013A - A / C7014A - A4

fade resistance (in years) 15 without glass / 20 under glass

 

 

HP premium plus photo paper, glossy or

matte

C6831A - A / C6832A - A4

4-5

 

HP premium photo paper, glossy

C6039A - A / C6040A - A4

2-3

 

My HP Deskjet 1220C A3+ printer also uses the 78 cartridges.

[carl smith]

Come back and ask in 50 years. Seriously nobody know. There are estimated from 25-100 years for various brands, with HP being lower as you stated. HP isn't really renowned for photographic quality. They don't have the control that Epsons and particularly the new Canons have.<br><br>

 

The Image Permanence Institute is a world renowned resource and testing center. They do use accelerated testing techniques, but they also have cabinets full of various materials dating back to I believe the 60s. The <a href="http://www.rit.edu/~661www1/">IPI</a> may not necessarily be of interest or of relation to this directly but the only true way to test these materials is to give them real time. I give you the link in case you're curious.

[carl smith]

Your success will vary greatly with the paper you use and what environment you live in. If its a controlled area, AC and whatnot and doesn't reach extremes then you'll be doing fairly well in that regard. However back to the papers: a lot of people have trouble with Kodaks papers and various other ones such as Epson and Canon papers have supposedly had issues when printed on with HP inks.

[edsel_adams]

I have Epson 1270 prints on my wall from last year that have lost all their blue & green,these prints havent been in the sun either!

[robert_kennedy]

Like they say - nobody knows. Honestly, any claim by a company should be taken with a grain of salt. These "archival" claims are simply educated guesses. And I'll bet dollars to donuts, that they are somewhat optimistic.

 

If it matters, get a Frontier print.

[rich815]

Or use a pigment-based printer like the Epson 2000, or the rumored new Epson pigment printers coming this summer. They suposedly leave dye-based inkjet prints in the dust when it comes to archival stability.

[ahaohio]

Until the original file has been deleted, lost in a disk-crash, lost in a CD-R crash or the file format has been obsoleted....

[bob_salomon]

?The display-life figures given here assumes NO reciprocity

failure and were derived from accelerated glass-filtered and

bare-bulb fluorescent light fading tests conducted at 75F and

60% RH; they are based on the �standard� indoor display

condition of 450 lux for 12 hours per day employed by Wilhelm

Imaging Research, Inc"

 

Can you or your customer maitain these conditions? They can if

they are a museum or a gallery.

 

They would be difficult to matntain in a home or office.

 

And then they do not include other influences like gasse in the

atmosphere like ozone, tobacco smoke, houshold influences.

 

If you gave complete control the life figures MAY be possible. If

you do mot they are pretty meaningless.

 

For anyone that is looking for an actual proven life Tetenal

Spectra Jet Glossy 264g has been selling in the US market for 6

years and seems to perform well onder typical conditions

encountered in homes and pffices,

[natasha_x]

I've had a print from an Epson C80 in my East window for three months with no fading compared to the control print. I figure if it can remain unchanged for three months while getting several hours of morning sun per day, it'll last many years under normal indoor veiwing conditions, which is many hundreds of times dimmer than sunlight, with very, very little UV content. BTW, the printer costs $180, uses pigment-based inks and has individual ink tanks. Epson does not push it as a "photo" printer because it has only 4 colors, but I see no difference at all between 4 and 6. Now, if only they would come out with a 13" wide model. But then, of course, sales of their overpriced 2000P would suffer.