----- Original Message ----- From: "David Dyer-Bennet : "James B. Davis" <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: : : > Sure beats inkjet to see a real R4 photo print and lovely colours : > that won't fade like an inkjet. : : This is out-of-date information; RA4 prints are considerably less : permanent than the best inkjet prints (Epson pigmented inks being one : obvious good choice). this is not out of date, this is *currently* factual based on bad processing techniques. remember the 70's when minilabs were washless? We discovered all the print fading was attributable to the fact that images were stabilized and not washed, so the industry moved back to processors that washed. Guess what - the new frontiers are largely washless again! Wash those frontier prints you want to last.. I have a 1950's Agfa colour print that is spectacular and shows all th colours one could imagine were originally there - there's no shift in any direction at all. I also have 4 Ilfoflex RA4 target images in a window at the moment facing the sun that show *much* less fading (in fact none that I can detect by eye*) compared to the New Improved Better This Time Orange Problem Fixed Epson Archival Pigment Ink print - which I have to say was flat and dull originally before I started my simple fade test. (*) They'll all be whacked under a densitometer in a few years and compared against the frozen images, the archivally stored ones and finally against the original densitometer figures. Time will tell .. k
