p.1 #1 · can you use preservation sprays and good photo paper to rescue the longevity of cheap ink?
I have a sort of photo-preserving UV-resistant (so it advertises) acrylic spray that I bought mainly to paint a glossy finish to a hand-painted wood box for my girlfriend's birthday but I wonder if used with the best photo papers (which is cheaper than OEM inks) would be a good strategy to ensure fade resistance and compensate for cheap non-OEM inks (or maybe OCP inks). Then there's lamination, but I think that protects the photos from air only. (Does acrylic spray completely protect prints from air?) How much can I expect out of this strategy? This would leave the photo vulnerable mostly to visible light, right?
p.1 #2 · can you use preservation sprays and good photo paper to rescue the longevity of cheap ink?
You would be adding some level of longevity but no where near that of oem ink. I would not sell a print with non oem ink but for personal work its fine. If a print lasts 10 years instead of 100 and you have to spend $5 every 10 years to re-print is it such a big deal?
p.1 #3 · can you use preservation sprays and good photo paper to rescue the longevity of cheap ink?
WAYCOOL wrote:
You would be adding some level of longevity but no where near that of oem ink. I would not sell a print with non oem ink but for personal work its fine. If a print lasts 10 years instead of 100 and you have to spend $5 every 10 years to re-print is it such a big deal?
Agreed 100% on selling prints. You can't "guess" or "hope" that c+y=z I would only trust known, tested, documented, proven results. that means OEM for now.
Even some of teh 3rd party might be 70 years on one specific paper, and 3 on another.
I also would not plan on "reprinting" even for my own work. With everything that goes into making aprint, it is a lot of work to find teh archived version that you want (out of maybe 5 variations, etc. Especially if you change printers/papers/inks/software.
That said, I use OCP inks for 90% of my own printing. Most of what we do could be classified as a "proof." It is a transient piece created so that we can see more clearly whjat an image will look like in a final product.
For something to throw on teh wall just for the sake of having something on the wall, no problem.
But any final output I would either print with Epson/Canon/HP OEM inks on known tested papers (not even mixing Espon papers with Canon inks; the opposiyer ight be OK), or send to a pro lab for a print if you don't have the volume to jusify keeping a second (or 6th, in my case ...) printer.
Also, FWIW: I do not have any real faith in any of the longevity testing that I have seen for OCP inks.
I really wish we had good test results, but even OCP has not published any numbers, and everything else is really just anectodotal. that said, they are a professional company and teh one that I have trusted teh most for 3rd party inks (Perhaps 2nd to Jon Cone.)
p.1 #4 · can you use preservation sprays and good photo paper to rescue the longevity of cheap ink?
It seems that if you laminate the photos you can protect them against gas and ozone fading, which is the dominant fader for many situations. However, I'm trying to elegantly find out how I can laminate a single-side, or anything to "seal in" the ink. (Anything that is light; i.e. not glass) Hot lamination works on both sides and self-laminating sheets have their own issues.
I tried sprays recently, and I can't figure out how to uniformly apply a coat over a photo. It seems that there's always unevenness.
