Comment by sllabres
7 days ago
What a effort. I did something similar for some pens and different inkjet colors a long time ago, but not nearly as broad or as methodical. The inkjet inks (especially red) were already blown after a short time (>4 months). But black still holds up 20 years later till now, only a little bit faded, so one can see the tracks of each row.
Foils (laminate or adhesive foils) or protective spray (UV) did not change the result at all. But one film tore and gave the whole thing an interesting, crackle-like appearance. However, the colors all faded in the same way, whatever protective used compared to direct exposure to sunlight.
I've noticed this as well -- at one point I had switched from Canon inkjet refills to a generic third party refills, and years later the photos from the knockoff have faded to an astonishing degree while the Canon ink prints look bright and vibrant.
Going through old photo albums that my parents have show a lot of fading as well, even though the pictures themselves were kept in photo albums in the dark for many years. We have negatives for some of those photos, which when scanned are bright and vibrant, but the prints vary significantly.
uh-oh, did you just anecdotally confirm that buying first party inks is the better decision? careful, you might just confirm to the makers that their DRM policies are legit.
I always say the same thing. HP and Xerox run their (ink and toner) labs for a reason, and their ink might be expensive but it's high quality and dependable.
I seldom print photos with my entry level HP inkjet, using HP inks. Even though my printer uses dye based color cartridges, none of the photos I print have faded even though they are framed and displayed 7/24/365. Ink is not colored water.
If you print/read/shred in two days, 3rd party ink and lower quality paper is OK, but if you want to be able to read or look at that thing after 10+ years, you need better quality paper and inks.
I use fountain pens a lot, and difference between ink quality becomes much more evident there. There are writing inks, there are archival inks (which are not Indian inks), and they behave totally different.
Third party ink is crap. On various forums you will read stories about people who attempt borderless printing and have terrible inksplosions. Quite often they are using third party inks and get no sympathy from people who are serious about inkjet printing.
Inkjet manufacturers put a lot of effort into ink formulations and often these are better in terms of VoC and other parameters. Sometimes you find certain first party inks are not at all lightfast (like the ink for the Epson ET-3750 which I found fades badly in less than six months) but there is very little independent testing of ink performance. If there was there might be a market for ink that performs better than first party ink.
3 replies →
Crazy amount of effort here. Awesome.
I did this for a single color from a single printer—the black toner from my Brother laser printer. I left it in my West facing office window for about 18 months. On the BACK SIDE I labeled it with pen. The pen on the back faded to almost nothing but the toner did not fade at all.
I did not do monthly scans, that would have been a better "experiment", but I was satisfied that a B&W laser print would last a very long time.
Maybe I should lightfast test my Brother Laser and my HP Inkjet (with Black Pigment based ink).
I thought that pigment based inks would be both waterproof and lightfast. Since I started to airbrush watercolor over my HP prints I am now very aware that these pigment based inks are not waterproof, even after long drying times.