It is fair to say that today’s printing technology doesn’t really have longevity in mind. Don’t expect your inkjet-printed photographs (be it from an Epson printer or not) to last like old Victorian photographs.
Unfortunately, it’s all in the ink. The type of ink is crucial in determining the shelf life, or should I say album life of printed photographs.
Dye based Inks
Dye Based ink is the most common and popular too. Although this type of ink produces vivid and glossy results, it has one major flaw: it doesn’t like contact with the air. Oxidization occurs very easily with dye based inks, especially when the paper is porous.
If you add light to the equation and humidity, oxidisation will be accelerated. The print quality of your photographs will deteriorate quite quickly. You will notice the vibrancy reducing and then the picture will start to fade.
Storing your photographs in a dark dry place, your pictures will probably only last about 20 years. This isn’t a particularly long time if you are trying to keep treasured moments for future generations!
Pigment Based Inks
There is a distinct advantage with pigment inks as the molecules of the pigment are suspended in a clear resin which effectively seals the colour in. For this reason, pigment ink is a better medium for photo printing.
This technology is improving and becoming more widely used. Pigment based inks can give a photograph a 200 year life plus the ink is not so fussy on what paper you use. However, it is still best not to place photographs in direct sunlight as bleaching will occur.
Store your photos digitally
To safeguard the loss of precious photographs the ideal solution is to store your digital images safely and securely. Keep your photo files on a separate hard drive and back them up on DVD. With the growth of ‘cloud’ based services such as DropBox , Google Cloud and Apple’s ICloud, you can also store your images securely on-line. Although to play safe always, but always, have a local back-up!
When saving your images it is best to save them at the highest resolution possible. If you can, it is ultimately the best to use a lossless file type such as TIFF to save your original photographs. This way you don’t suffer from any loss of image data.