I believe I have seen or heard reference to a spray "ink fixative", or some such thing, which will help photo-printer inks to stabilize or not fade too quickly. Does anyone have any information about it? Thanks
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I’ll let you know in a few years! 🙂 I just bought a can of some stuff called "Sureguard" at the local camera store, which is what they recommended. It’s primarily a UV protectorant. I think it was Brent that gave the name of one he’s used in the past, but DeRusto is the only thing I can think of. (I’m not sure that’s right, but I associated it with spray paint.) There’s also one manufactured under the name Marshall, which is supposed to be very good, too. The camera place I shop hasn’t been able to get any of it lately. I’ve been told you can buy this at craft stores. We have one called Michaels in our town, and the people I talked to looked at me like I was crazy, but I think it may have been just the salespeople I was talking to that weren’t familiar with it. If you go to a place like that, look over by the oil paints. The Marshall brand is popular with artists because it apparently lets a person paint on top of a photograph that’s been sprayed.
Donald and Beth, I’ve used Krylon #1305 ( by Sherwin Williams) in the past with good results ( at least I’ve had no "bad" results ) . See the following link at Red River Paper , <http://www.redrivercatalog.com/Pages/archival_frameset.html> .
They compare results using the spray versus not using the spray.
I’ve read a little about this, but not much yet because I’m not crazy about spraying my prints. But I have read about the different kinds of papers available, and the difference between dye and pigment inks. I think I’d want to know more about this before I decided which prints to spray or not. For example, I believe there is one kind of paper in which the ink sinks into the paper and actually becomes part of the paper. I believe there’s another kind in which the ink sits on top of the paper and dries there. I thought one of these could be sprayed reasonably, and one would not really benefit from spraying. Am I on track here?
Donald, I believe that the main purpose of these fixative sprays are to prevent damage to the print from water droplets etc., which would cause smearing. Except for one bad HP colour cartridge, I have not had problems with fading (yet). The product I use (Inkjet fix) claims to have UV inhibitors and to protect against fading.
Brent, how do you feel about the Epson Color Life paper ? I just bought some semigloss today. I also feel weird about ‘spraying’ something on the pictures. What if i spray too much or something…
main purpose of these fixative sprays are to prevent damage
Actually, I know several professional photographers who believe that they have had a great deal of trouble with prints fading quickly when they did not use a spray.
Inkjet prints have always been subject to fading. I thought that was the whole idea with the Epson 2000, and now the 2200 printers…the ink is supposedly longer lived. I haven’t left any of my inkjet prints out in the sun, but looking at prints I made several years ago, I can’t see any obvious fading. I figure, Hell, I’m 66 years old…how long to I want the prints to last, anyway? The files are on CD, so they can be reprinted by my heirs, if they’re interested. Bert
The files are on CD, so they can be reprinted by my heirs, if they’re interested.
Bert, there has been a research by some computer magazine and the consumer union (which usually prove they don’t understand anything about their test subject 😉 ) in the Netherlands. This research showed many cd’s will not last longer than just only a few years, especially the cheap ones. I always print with pigmented inks on Epson coated paper. according to the Wilhelm Institute they should last -if I remember well- for about 70 years. I’m 55 now, so …..
I read about that very same thing in the Dallas Morning News Technology section earlier this month. It was the Dutch magazine called PC Active <http://www.aktu.nl/pc-active> that tested the CD’s. The link here is in Dutch, thought you might want to look at it. I don’t know any Dutch, so I’m not sure if this link tells you all about the tests or just sells the magazine.
From what I read in the tech section, they tested 30 manufacturers after 20 months of storage. They said recordable CD’s may be the wrong way to store photos, music and data. What do they want us to use? Several data CD’s degraded (didn’t say which ones, wonder why), even after being stored at room temperature in the dark. The dye used to make cheaper CD-R discs is the problem. The most stable dye is usually found in the premium brands. Not sure if they are just trying to sell the premium brands, but you often do get what you pay for. Too bad they didn’t test DVD’s, I try to always the Verbatim brand for those.
I guess we’re the guinea pigs for all this technology.
I knew there was some debate going on about CD longevity. I have used a lot of cheap ones…I have over 130 CDs full of images. I don’t need them to last twenty years, or even five, probably. I expect to migrate the collection to new (and hopefully better) media every few years. Right now, I could go to DVDs, but I think I will skip a generation and go to DVD-Blue, which should be out in a year or two. They will have a capacity of 30 Gigabytes, so my whole collection would fit on three or four disks. The 20-month figure you quoted scares me a little. I’m going to go back and test some of mine and make sure they’re OK. I am storing them in special archival boxes made of low-acid cardboard, in a cool and dark closet. Humidity is low here in southern California, so that’s not a problem. Bert
I read the article on the CD-R’s in Dutch. It says that some CD’s of poor quality lost most of their recorded material after all ready 20 months. However it was said that these were CD’s that should not have been put on the market in the first place, that is how bad they are. Íf you buy the magazine you get a CD with which you can find out how far your CD’s are gone. They do not provide a solution in the article apart from recommending to buy good quality CD’s.
I checked who the publisher is. The magazine has been in existence for over 12 years and is made by a group of pc-enthusiasts. I couldn’t detect any commercial links at all.
Thanks Robert, for telling us what the article said. It’s nice to have an international forum like this. Hopefully the better brand CD-R’s on the market will stand the test of time, we shall see.
Thanks for the information, Robert. I myself suspect it’s going to be like floppies. I have boxes of them with old data, but it really doesn’t matter whether they’ve gone bad or not, since I no longer have any way to access a floppy and long since transferred what really matters to other media.
Chuck, I’ll be waiting. 42-1/2 years doesn’t seem as long to me now as it would have 10 years ago. 8^)
Jodi, " Brent, how do you feel about the Epson Color Life paper ? I just bought some semigloss today. I also feel weird about ‘spraying’ something on the pictures. What if i spray too much or something…"
Epson rates the Color Life paper at about 25 years before significant fading. That paper/ink combo, however, is not at all water resistant ( funny how these things work ) . If you do any Color Life prints that are not behind glass, I’d be inclined to spray them with one of the Krylon ( non glossy ) sprays .
I have some prints on the ColorLife paper that I really like. It seems like it gives a slightly more saturated color than either the Matte or Premium Glossy, that lends itself well to portraits. My youngest daughter ( Laura, 25 ) looks great on ColorLife ( her photo is over my desk <G> ).
My youngest daughter ( Laura, 25 ) looks great on ColorLife ( her photo is over my desk <G> ).
You can’t judge printer paper by how your daughter looks on it. No way you can be objective! 🙂 bert EDIT: Didn’t know you were just a youngster. My youngest (son) will be 41 next month.
Robert, thank you for answering the question about this test. I suppose you read the magazine, I just only read the outcome and the comments. Funny how such an article travels across the ocean and comes up in the city of the Mavericks and the Cowboys…. Chuck, could you mail me the outcome of your test? I’m 2 1/2 younger than you are, so statistically I’ve got a good chance to be able to read it.
Notice how I’m defending Dallas… 😉 I’m a Yankee fan, who cares about the Rangers. I’ve been offline due to thunderstorms, think we just had more rain than Isabel is spinning out…4" in a couple hours! It’s a flooded mess; monsoon season has returned here after the usual summer drought. The flowers are starting to bloom once again…so I’m happy!
Ok i just got home after being out most of the day.. Leen, i just mailed you.
Pete, i got your mail…so it’s coming from Florida…yay ! Chuck, nothing to tell me today ? Did you get my mail this morning ?
Brent, I printed one image today on the Color Life and yes it’s quite magnificant. I don’t suspect I’ll be spraying or dripping water on them at any point 😉 I’ll look into the Krylon though…thanks.
Jodi, hi – yes, I e-mailed you this morning, but I’m guessing my ISP gave up on trying to get messages through to yours. I may try from an alternate e-mail address and see if it makes any difference.
Jodi, re the patch: I trashed it – Microsoft has been hacked before. I’m going to check out their site, but my natural inclination to be skeptical kicked into high gear when that one came into my mailbox…
My skepticism is higher now that I’ve been to the MS website – they have a security patch listed there, but it’s not the same one. Think I’ll wander over to the Norton site….
I got an e-mail about the patch and I don’t even have Windows, I have IE but it’s on a Mac…I’d be suspicious of that one too! Steer clear of those attachments on that e-mail, mine had three. Just got another weird attachment from an address I don’t recognize, looks like they’re startin’ up again…oh no! 🙁
Here’s a link that talks about it. There have been several exploits that have tried this approach so I’m not sure if this is the same one that you received but it should be close enough.
Microsoft doesn’t distribute patches this way. Be suspicious.
I just got an email pretending to be from eBay and wanting me to re-enter my userid, password, credit card information, etc. If you get one of those be warned that that’s not for real either.
Did anyone else get mail from microsoft….a link to a network patch ? Is
Re; E-bay, geeze, this is why ‘reading’ is so necessary. E-bay purposely makes it a point to tell you that they DO NOT send e-mails asking for passwords, bank account #’s etc… and that if you get one to forward it to them.
Re; virus, getting sick of checking my mail. All I get is that stupid virus attachment…about 12 since last night. Good thing I have Norton.
Some mail programs have a built in filter to which you could just add some identifiers of that unsolicited mail and not be bothered with it anymore.
My experience is that the filters are almost useless. The spammers change their "from" address frequently. So if you block Email from "spammer12635", tomorrow it will be from "spammer12367" and the filter will ignore it. Some filters look for keywords, and if you can anticipate what the spam or virus message will say, which is almost impossible….
That is true. However I have received some from microsoft security centre and microsoft upgrade centre. So in this case one message would be stopped but the other would have gotten through.
It seems to wind down. Yesterday evening I checked and my mailbox was only half full (1.6Mb) after a whole day. Quite a lot down from the day before when I had to delete 6 Mb.
Is there a way of blocking messages that have particular words in the header? I would love to enter the words Microsoft, Viagra, enlargement, mortgage, etc. Over 90% of my mail can be trashed nowadays.
In the old days, for a particular client, I sometimes had to spray glossy images with some Kodak spray to an almost matte surface. They preferred this over matte prints and I still don’t understand why. I still seem to remember this spray protected from UV light, although they used these images just only for a few weeks. Maybe this spray would work on inkjetprints as well. BTW: when we ran out of this spray and Kodak couldnot deliver in time, we used some hairspray with exactly the same result.(and a lot more profit.I happened to know on chalk drawings you apply a fixer that can be replaced easily by hairspray as well.)
I still remember this was rather expensive; unfortunately I don’t remeber the name.
Is there a way of blocking messages that have particular words in the header?
Most spam filters work that way. AOL supposedly filters my mail with a very sophisticated filter. They claim that block 70-80 percent. My spam traffic does seem to have gone down lately. But I still get a dozen or so a day. Still annoying. Bert
The sources of the virus-laden mailings of this week keep changing the titles and ‘from’ with each new blast – I gave up on writing enough rules to knock ’em out. Fortunately, my ISP is ‘cleansing’ them before notifying me that they had received the bad stuff…
Is there a way of blocking messages that have particular words in the header? I would love to enter the words Microsoft, Viagra, enlargement, mortgage, etc. Over 90% of my mail can be trashed nowadays.
You can apply filters in your browser to eliminate such but the problem has now become that what we think are actual words are graphics and the filtering can no longer catch such things. Everytime we find a solution, those bad guys discover another way around.
Bert, I really wonder about aol’s supposed filters. I have an aol account, and my aol mailboxes are constantly full to the brim with spam, whereas my "real" accounts average about one piece of spam per day for all three accounts, and that’s with no filters at all on the server. I will say I never did get the Nigerian dictator spam at aol, though.
Barb, All I can say for sure about AOL’s filters is that MY spam has decreased significantly in the last month or so. I report every single spam that I get. Maybe that has made a difference, dunno. And I HAVE gotten the Nigerian Scam a couple times, although not recently. I thought it was pretty funny, the way it was written to sound…"African", I guess, with quaint phrasing. Most Africans I have met speak the King’s English very well, so it was really an obvious scam. Bert
We use the MailWasher program and are happy with it. As well as the default settings you add your own filter settings in either the address, subject or message body. You eliminate the messages offering great mortgage rates, enlarge body parts, perscriptions, etc, etc. As someone also mentioned you view your messages prior to receiving them in your email program. You need to watch so you don’t miss emails you want. Download free and try out for a month before buying.
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