wildimages@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: >>Actually, inkjet color prints may outlast silver-gelatine B&W prints. >>They certainly outlast chromogenic color prints. They may well >>outlast dye-transfer prints. > That's what they said about the prints from my Epson 1200! > > It's fruitless to argue on this - the manufacturers blurb tell us > the prints will last until "the big crunch": people who've hung the > damned things on thier wall behing glass say it can be as little as > six months. Happenstance data for silver prints 80+ years old given > no special "archival" treatment has proved them to survive (proof > not prediction). My own chromogenic prints stored in a box in a > drawer have survived 30+y ... I'm not going by the manufacturers' blurbs, I'm going by the Wilhelm Imaging Research test results. There was a problem with the Epson 1270 ink and paper where it could be as little as a *week*. And this slipped by Wilhelm at first (turned out to be ozone, I believe). Live and learn. I've got fairly badly faded chromogenic materials from 30 years ago, stored simililarly to what you describe. >>>Unlikely, if you save in a sensible format. >>>TIFF has been around for 20 years already, >>>it'll be around far more than another 20. > 1) TIFF is an extensible format - not a tablet of stone ??? > 2) TIFF is a data format: it saves the sequence of bytes (RGB values) and > a load of other stuff (color space, profile, etc). > These bytes don't actually become an image until they are translated. If > the hardware changes, if the media change, so does "the image". I guess > what I'm thinking around is to challenge the idea of absolute "constancy" > of an image (visual thing) coded within a digital file. Sure, even if we > are careful and the sequence of bits on the storage medium is preserved > AND we keep refreshing the storage so we don't end up with incompatible/corrupt > media there is still another level to the equivalence that lies outside > (is not inherent in) the bit stream. Well, the color space info defines what the file is *trying* to represent. Future devices may produce different results, but they'll be *more* true to the file than current, not less. -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
