Fading of patch sheets in the dark

[Ink stained Fingers]

I'm just starting a fading test by keeping the patch sheets in the dark - in a normal living room environment in a cabinet.

I did already some similar test a while ago going after a slightly different question - how long should I wait scanning a patch sheet to create a profile - 30 minutes or 3 or 8 hours or a day ?

https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...profile-patch-sheets.14996/page-4#post-132815

I'm running this test with the Epson 106 ink and the InkTec dye inks sold for the ET-7750 - claimed compatible with the 106 Epson ink, and I'm using 4 papers - Epson premium glossy - HP Photo Glossy as PE/RC papers and two cast coated papers - LogicSeek 270 g and Hayatec.
I'll report to you interim results - I won't hold them back for the next 100 years until manufacturer's claims come true..................

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

As mentioned I started another dark fading test, here are the first results after one week. I'm doing the test on 4 papers - Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper - PGPP - , a HP Premium Plus Photo Paper - PPPP - and a cast coated LS 270 and a cast coated Hayatec paper, both via Amazon. I'm using the Epson 106 ink which is a kind of reference for me since a while, and an InkTec ink which is sold as a multipurpose dye ink for lots of Epson printers. I'm printing as always color patch sheets with 96 colors on a WF2010W which let me easily swap ink cartridges to use different inks. I'm printing always with the same driver settings matte quality standard color mgmt off.
I'm using the i1Profiler package to do all the deltaE(74) math, averages of the dE's of the 96 patches etc .
Let's have a look to the table below - you find the papers and inks under test and the time periods - I have measured the patches the first time 10 minutes after print and then 1 hour after print, that's the data in the first vertical column,
and I have measured the patches after a day and 1 one week - that's where I stand now. The second and third colums start counting the clock 1 hour after print - not 10 minutes anymore - the data of this initial 1 hour drift are not inlcuded in the measruements starting 1 hour after print.
I'm listing 2 values for all measuring points - the average of all 96 deltaE drifts for the given period, and an individual color which has the largest deltaE. That's colors are typically in the darker range - muted, dirty green or magenta colors drifting much more than the average., these values are listed as max dE values.

You can see wide variations, it is a pretty complex situation how each ink/paper combination delivers quite different results. It is quite typical that the values for the period of 1 hour to 1 day are lower than for the first hour, - (2nd column vs. 1st column) colors are drifting significantly more in the first hour, and the values for the colors drifting the most are pretty high for some paper/ink combinations.

I'll keep the patch sheets in the dark for this test - no sun - no ozone - no accelerated testing at all , and I will add some measurements at the 1 month and 3 month and 1 year point of time.

It should be clear, very clear already from this test that scanning a profile patch sheet after 15 minutes or even an hour after print will not deliver a very accurate profile, and you cannot improve the quality of the profile by using more color patches - going up to the thousends of them - you cannot increase profile accuracy this way at all compensating this color drift.

This current test just runs with dye inks, I do not have any clean pigment inks available at this time, the test some time ago to the link in the earlier part of this posting indicates that pigment inks may drift less - but I don't know.

 

[Werwolf1985]

Very interesting to see! Looking forward to see the next results. Up to now, the Inktec on the Logicseek CC paper doesn't seem to be a bad choice. Any idea how is the gamut in comparison to the 106 Epson?

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

the Inktec on the Logicseek CC paper doesn't seem to be a bad choice.

It's your assessment, balancing the applicable criteria.

Here are 3 gamut views - 3D does not make too much sense, here at L=50 and L= 12 in the darker range,
yellow for the Glossy 300, a PC/RC 3rd party paper, a Druckfuxx cc paper in red and the Canon PT101 in blue

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Let me update the data after one month of fading - fading in the dark - no light and normal living room environment, prints kept in a plastic sleeve. These are the numbers how they look after the first month

I removed the max. numbers from the previous table, it's always a darker mixed color which creates the maxima values. And it's again the same situation as in the other fading tests - the results depend on the ink/paper combination and not just on the ink or paper alone. But it needs more - much more time that numbers separate better for a clear status; I'll update the table at 3 months.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I was trying to find some tests for the dark fading effects and searched for 'dark fading inkjet'; you get plenty of hits - lots of postings and publications but rarely supported by any test - you get the impression that one author is just copying from the other, and lots of those postings are rather old already - about 10 - 25 years ago. And there have even be some comments about the fading of optical brighteners. But one Youtube video hit me -

(My CANON Pro 100 Prints are fading in 2 months !)

Jose Rodriguez commenting on a complaint that one of his viewers has with precisioncolors inks in his Pro 100, and Jose really did a test ....

 

[mikling]

2019 saw the release of the SE edition for the Pro-100 inkset. This video predates that release. Here with SE was the introduction of as fade free inks as possible in the grays in the aftermarket and the cost of this exceeds normal aftermarket ink. The PC42SE inkset was nearly aborted given the extra cost of some of the colors because the cost of the ink was factors more than its predecessor. By 2019, PC had moved had shifted its mission and took on a more serious look at what aftermarket was to accomplish WITHOUT custom ICC profiles.

Now back to the topic at hand. Readers should take note of this as well.

https://www.usa.canon.com/explore/chromalife

https://www.usa.canon.com/explore/chromalife/chromalife-100-plus

https://www.usa.canon.com/explore/chromalife/chromalife-100

The above should delineate the differences between the Chromalife 100 and Plus in a formal clear fashion by Canon. Take great note of the following:

Read the Light and Gas tab.

Light versus Gas ratios should be noted and also look at the fine print. Also many people from a marketing perspective see 100 and think they are comparable to pigment inks and the sales people ( Non Canon) push this as well. Let the incorrect narrative live...why not?

It should be noted historically if you had not been following the evolution of Canon ink formulations at the detailed level some 15 years ago or more. Chromalife 100 was introduced with the CLI-8 generation and notably the time of the Pro-9000. Canon within the professional community thought that this ink with the CLI-8 was a revolution. Chemists within the ink community was quietly snickering because they knew Canon had fallen into the trap of formulating dye inks resistant to UV or light attack but that within normal confines traded off its gas resistance. So the ink was very open to gas attack as a result. They were the laughing stock. Thus Canon began an expensive program to further/expand the confines of the tradeoff between gas and light attack tradeoffs. Epson it should be noted took another route with its dye ink with synthetic dyes which proved to be costly but they had been hit marketing wise about 6 years earlier with gas attack, necessitating the introduction of a line of swellable papers from Epson. Then we also had HP touting long life in the same era but using their HP Premium Plus swellable papers to their spec.
Long and short there are multiple factors affecting the life of dye inks. None are easily tested without rigorous equipment.
If you refill and are uncomfortable with fade, I think pigment ink is the real no anxiety solution. A suitable printer costs more but that cost is still less than using OEM ink with the real ratings of say real Chromalife 100+ which when exposed to gases is still worse than pigment. The situation is getting worse with gas attack day by day. Today if anyone is serious about true longevity ..use pigment ink. Chromalife 100 PLUS is still not that great but vastly better than normal dye ink and vastly superior to Chromalife 100 ( Non PLUS). That Canon chooses to point out clearly the issue should be noted and not dismissed.

And Yes, for over ten years when creating profiles I let my targets settle for at least 24 hours or more. With pigments, this is a must and a period of Days is preferred. One can visually see the changes on the surface with the naked eye. The extent of this will vary by each ink and its color. The shift in gloss differential is very notable with pigments. With dye inks one can see the shift in color as the inks dry and outgas every minute until it typically settles down after about 20 minutes but still shifting but in a much slower manner.
Of course you never mount a print until it fully dries or put in an album.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

All these articles show the complexity to assess the long term stability of inkjet prints - and Canon is emphazising it as well - best performance as they report it can only be acheived with particular ink/paper combinations.
I could imagine that users of your PC inks are interested to know how these inks would perform in comparison to the OEM inks.
Drying time of profile patch sheets - I wait as well for aobut 24 hours - and I do a rescan after a week for papers which I may use for a longer time.

 

[mikling]

I will add furthermore that the gas test is done with just three attack gases. One cannot determine what other gases might be lurking in the environment that could potentially be more serious to fade. Users should note that even within the same neighborhood, there are significant differences from home to home and even within the home itself. One needs to consider whether the temperature of the walls slowly change during the day as this promotes convectional currents that essentially fan air over the print in a passive fashion. For example prints on exterior perimeters is not a good idea as well. I have prints within my home made with the original Pro-100 inks from about ten years ago and I have zero fade but I understand that my environment has minimal use of cleaning agents and aerosols and hardly any diesel vehicles with high levels of NOx but normal catalytic converter equipped vehicles do produce SOx.

I know people want a set number and any test will never be sufficient. My simple answer still remains...the only ink I trust with my own marriage pictures made with aftermarket ink is pigment ink. I simply have had experience with too many varied results that I know better if I want to be honest about it.

People want simple answers but life and all its aspects is not simple. They don't understand life yet. Youth has its charm.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

One cannot determine what other gases might be lurking in the environment that could potentially be more serious to fade

There are plenty of such agents - and don't forget formaldehyde which was very popular years ago and was almost ubiquitous in paints, glues, colors and chip wood boards and furniture emanating formaldedyde for years, and a place in a drawer in such cabinet was a higher risk place than a picture on the wall. All that cannot be encompassed in a test and finally deriving a single performance number from that test is not easily possible.
I didn't do much testing with pigment inks, but when I just look to numbers published by Wilhelm Research for pigment inks I see a rather ambigous situation with the performance/durability benefits of pigment inks over dye inks , and I tried to pull some data together to get a better view on it - but it is as complex as always - published numbers vary very much with the paper used in the test and the type and generation of pigment inks

https://www.printerknowledge.com/threads/do-pigment-inks-fade-slower-than-dye-inks.15466/post-134801

People want simple answers but life and all its aspects is not simple

I'm asked now and then a simple question - what is the best ink for my printer ? - but I just don't have a simple answer. All technical details of cars and equipment are tested and magazines filled with it - and cameras are tested by their optical and technical performance - down to the electron well capacity of the last of the 60 million sensors and the S/N ratio and distortion ratios and AI software capabilities and much more, but nothing comparable is published for printers and inks.