On Fri, February 25, 2011 09:42, Lea Murphy wrote: > I use a fine point permanent marker. > > Sometimes on the front, sometimes on the back. Usually not on the image > but on the border. > > Is that bad? It's quite common. It's likely to be pretty harmless, mostly; it would take an unlucky interaction between the pen ink and the print materials. (The basic Sharpie pens are actually quite permanent on ordinary paper at least.) It's not the most-archival practice around, but that's never the only concern. A step up would be a pigment-based art marker; somebody mentioned the Utrecht brand, and I found something easily in an art supply store when I needed it. Tina's suggestion of using actual printer ink (for inkjet prints) in a Rapidograph is technically about perfect, since it's the same ink already used in the rest of the image; hard to see how that could hurt archival permanence. I think the serious art market really objects to signing a photograph in the image area (though I'm sure some photographers buck that trend); in the border, or just on the back, seem to be what's accepted. (I know lots of people use metallic pens to sign on the image area, but the ones I've seen, at least, aren't selling to what I mean by the "serious art market", though I admit that's a very vague term). (*I* am of course not selling to the serious art market, just in case anybody might be confused. I buy a very very little around there very occasionally.) -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
