Predicting the Light Stability of Contemporary Photographic Print Materials
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23738/CCSJ.170106Keywords:
light stability of print materialsAbstract
The light stability of six contemporary photographic print materials was investigated. Two silver halide, one dye sublimation transfer, one liquid toner electrophotographic, one dye based and one pigment based inkjet material on nanoporous RC paper were exposed by a set of narrow band LED covering the visible spectrum. The proprietary chamber exposes the samples at ambient environmental conditions. The colorants in the prints exhibit different fading properties, but all colorants are most sensitive in the wavelength range 400 to 550 nm. Pigment based systems are considerably more stable than dye based systems. The absorbance losses of the colorants per unit of exposure (1 kJ/ cm2 ) represent the sensitivity of the colorants to the specific wavelength of light.The sensitivities at different wavelengths are used to predict fading of a white light LED. The method assumes that the changes of narrow band wavelength expsoures are additive and that a white light exposure can be simulated by adding photon-energy corrected intensities of narrow wavelength light. Significant fading of at least one colorant is observed for all investigated print materials at 70 kJ/cm2 exposure.The method predicts absorbance changes of the colorants well for most of the investigated print materials except for silver halide photographic prints. In silver halide prints, fading at longer wavelength is not independent of the presence of light around 400 nm and absorbance losses are not additive. The fading of the colorants depend also on the destruction of sacrificial UV absorbers which are present in the top layer. It is important to clearly identify a material as predictions are only valid for a specific colorant on a particular base material. The method can proabably be extended to other types of print materials, particularly fragile materials, but may not be suitable for complex image structures such as paintings.
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