It Isn't That Images Fade, It's That They Can Vanish

jaqian

The New York Times has an interesting article on injet photo printers and how your precious family snapshots can just disappear!

It caught my attention as I was thinking of printing off my most important family photos to save for future generations.

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It Isn't That Images Fade, It's That They Can Vanish

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/technology/circuits/05print.html

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What good photo printers exist that will guarantee long lasting photo prints?

Jaqian

daedalus2097

Well, none really... You'll get a good life out of pigment based printers - my Epson R800 is supposedly one of the best for longevity, along with its cousins using the same ink. Epson claim a long long time (can't remember how many years, but enough that it won't bother me in my lifetime anyway ) but don't guarantee it as they have only done accelerated stability studies on it, for obvious reasons. It is all based on them being kept away from sunlight and contamination, meaning either behind glass or in an album or folder. It has got a lot better recently, but like the article says, you're never gonna compete with the longevity of traditional prints. I'd say to keep them for future generations, burn them to CD or DVD

JMcL

Pigment seems to be the way to go alright. Newer higher end models (usually €400 and up) that use Vivera (HP), K6 (? Epson), and the equivalent Canon inks on appropriate papers have got good ratings from the Wilhelm institute mentioned in the article, up to 200 years in some combinations. It does of course mean biting the bullet and buying the manufacturers extortionately expensive ink - none of this 3rd party stuff!

Zillah

DVD ffs. What possesses people to think that coloured paper is the solution to long term storage I'll never know.

Harness the immortal binary. And even if DVD's only have a shelf life of 10-15 years, I'm sure there'll be some nice ultra-long lasting digital storage format in ten years time that will do the job nicely.

jaqian

Zillah wrote:

DVD ffs. What possesses people to think that coloured paper is the solution to long term storage I'll never know..

Maybe because photos have survived a 100+ years. I have some of my great-great-grandparents from 1901 and earlier. Paper seems to be the only format that will still be readable when all other tech is obsolete.

Harness the immortal binary. And even if DVD's only have a shelf life of 10-15 years, I'm sure there'll be some nice ultra-long lasting digital storage format in ten years time that will do the job nicely.

Its all well and good saying burn to CD/DVD but who is going to have anything to play these in twenty years time? As Blu-Ray and other formats take over/become cheaper, CD's etc will eventually be as usefull as 5.25" floppy disc. Technology changes so quickly that whatever format you use is going to be obsolete after a couple of years. Also not everyone is computer literate, you would be amazed at the amount of people I know who wouldn't have a clue how to go about accessing a photo DVD, never mind getting stuff printed off.

Also I know if I don't put in the work no one else will, thats why I want to print off the best and most important pictures that hopefully will be enjoyed by future generations of my family.

magicbastarder

Zillah wrote:

I'm sure there'll be some nice ultra-long lasting digital storage format in ten years time that will do the job nicely.

just like laserdiscs?

Calina

Zillah wrote:

DVD ffs. What possesses people to think that coloured paper is the solution to long term storage I'll never know.

Harness the immortal binary. And even if DVD's only have a shelf life of 10-15 years, I'm sure there'll be some nice ultra-long lasting digital storage format in ten years time that will do the job nicely.

TBH this is such a naive statement I'm quite amazed. One of the biggest problems long computerised companies have today is that much of their older data is written in a format which is totally inaccessible to them using today's technology. The problem is backwards compatibility is increasingly less long term.

You could say well when technology changes, be sure to run conversion jobs. You don't really have to do that with paper.

daedalus2097

Digital storage, even if it's gonna be obsoleted every few years, it can be transferred to whatever the current flavour is... Things like DVDs and CDs though aren't gonna disappear overnight. Even if a new format comes along, it's more than likely gonna be backwards compatible - HD-DVD drives will still read CDs and so on... And even if such a widespread format did disappear, there'll be so many second hand units in the world it'd be crazy... Look at records: Plenty of ppl are still using vinyl, there are a few new players available, and then think of the number of DVD drives in the world compared to turntables or laserdisc players at their respective peaks...

Besides, even nowadays, while a lot of people may not know how to look at photos give to them on a DVD, what are the chances that they don't know someone who can display them? Pretty slim indeed. And then think in a generation or two, while paper would be, nice digital will be expected as the normal way of giving pictures to someone.

Paper in the past was the *only* way of keeping an image, hence very early on it was made to last. These days printing on demand from a source file is commonplace, as many copies as anyone wants are available whenever they want, and so prints can be replaced at original quality without complicated and expensive restorations.

Calina

The problem isn't really just the hardware, it's the actual data format.

rymus

I'm reminded of that scene in the simpsons where Apu was talking about his doctoral thesis; "100,000 precisely ordered punchcards containing the world's first tic-tac-toe program"

I wouldnt worry people, flickr will probably still be around in 150+ years I'll keep printing photos just in case though

jaqian

I can breathe a sigh of relief. Just found out that my photo printer a Canon iP4200 if used with canon inks and paper and stored properly should last a 100yrs: http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=MultiMiscPageAct&key=album&keycode=ChromaLifeDetail&fcategoryid=103

So I don't have to worry too much about pictures fading now Anyway whatever album I'll put together I will include a DVD with the original digital files included.

daedalus2097

Calina wrote:

The problem isn't really just the hardware, it's the actual data format.

Hmmm... That's another one that shouldn't be a problem. When new formats appear, the old ones don't just disappear... It's all just file descriptors. Short term I know, but the native Amiga file format is still supported by Photoshop and a number of other things, even though it hasn't been developed properly in over 10 years, and even then it was a small minority. Because so many billion images exist in a format, it'll never disappear and be forgotten.

Like the Simpsons reference rymus Hehe... Formats like that disappeared though because of how impractical they were. There's absloutely no reason why JPEG or Targa or whatever won't be readable in 100 years, seeing as they only exist in software...

JMcL

daedalus2097 wrote:

Hmmm... That's another one that shouldn't be a problem. When new formats appear, the old ones don't just disappear... It's all just file descriptors. Short term I know, but the native Amiga file format is still supported by Photoshop and a number of other things, even though it hasn't been developed properly in over 10 years, and even then it was a small minority. Because so many billion images exist in a format, it'll never disappear and be forgotten.

Like the Simpsons reference rymus Hehe... Formats like that disappeared though because of how impractical they were. There's absloutely no reason why JPEG or Targa or whatever won't be readable in 100 years, seeing as they only exist in software...

What about the multitude of pointless proprietary raw formats? You may say that Adobe will continue to support them, but I read recently that it's now next to impossible to read files from the first Canon/Kodak DSLR from the mid 90's. I think dcraw might be able to do it, but it does happen. I don't think Canon DPP even supports files from the D30, which is what 7-8 years old? You're putting your trust in Adobe to maintain backwards compatibility, but that will only hold as long as it's not costing them any substantial amount to maintain that. In the case of the Amiga IFF files, they were a very straightforward format, so maintaining compatibility is a no brainer. Interpolating the the data from bayer arrays is another thing entirely, even when Nikon aren't throwing curve balls by encrypting parts of it (to protect the user - bollox).

To be fair to Adobe, their pushing of DNG is to be encouraged, and kudos especially to Pentax for supporting it directly in the K10D. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Canikon to follow suit.

The other very important point that somebody brought up was whether anybody would bother 60 or 70 years down the line. It's fascinating to turn up a shoebox full of old photos, but bear in mind that cameras weren't anywhere near as pervasive in previous generation, so the number of actual photos is likely to be quite small. Compare that to somebody happily firing off 1000+ shots/month and never really deleting anything. Are the grandkids really going to be enthusiastic enough to wade through terabytes (can't remember what comes after tera, but more likely that) of this, even assuming they can read them in the first place.

I think it's a very real problem, and for the moment, prints are probably the way to go, though Flickr if it stays the course could be an alternative, though of course somebody has to keep paying for that!

jaqian

JMcL wrote:

Are the grandkids really going to be enthusiastic enough to wade through terabytes (can't remember what comes after tera, but more likely that) of this, even assuming they can read them in the first place.

>petabyte?

Thats even assuming they have the inclination,know-how or money to figure out what to do with old technology.