I've been approached by a photography gallery to exhibit my Digital Photographs. In order to sell the images in limited editions, I need to find the best way to create archival prints.

Apparently there is a printing process that creates prints which last 125 years?

Any suggestions?

Felicity http://www.nzmagic.com/felicity.html

-- Felicity Rogers (felicity_rogers@hotmail.com), July 31, 2000

Answers

Ilfochrome, Iris, Giclee, Fugi Crystal Archive, dye sublimation, hand colored gelatin silver prints. There's bound to be a few more. james

-- james (james_mickelson@hotmail.com), July 31, 2000.

Felicity, there are more opinions on this out there than there are dpi's in a digital print.

For an eyeful I suggest you go to: www.egroups.com/messages/epson- inkjet

Here is a sample from the above list:

"Bruce, There has been a thread on the Adobe BB debating over which type of printer is better etc. There is a non-consensus to say the least. One person says dye sub fade faster and another says 50 years plus. Another person claims the color gamut on the Epson 1270 exceeds anything that a dye sub can put out. In term of color gamut and archivalness in the lower price range $1000 or under (I am considering the new Olympus dye sub) which is better? If I raise the $ amount to $4000 is there any change in my options..."

By the way, 'giclee' is - as far as I am concerned - just a way of keeping from saying ink jet. It is French and means 'spray' and also ink jet in French. So, some clever marketing person in this country picked it up to make the process sound mysterious and worthy of a few extrea $$$$.

From my readings I gather professionals like Annie Leibovitz use Iris prints. If you do them yourself on an Epson or other printer, it depends.......

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), August 01, 2000.

Go to www.tssphoto.com

Then go to the products section. They have more information on archival products for inkjet printers than any other source I've found. Look at the article on that site about the new Epson 2000 printer with the Epson archival inks. They are also very good about answering questions. They also have a very wide range of papers.

-- steve (s.swinehart@worldnet.att.net), August 01, 2000.

Find a shop using a new Fuji Frontier machine. They can take your digital files and print them on normal photo paper. That way you get the same archival life as any color photo.

Or find place that does LightJet photos, similar process.

-- Terry Carraway (TCarraway@compuserve.com), August 01, 2000.

Felicity: the exact same thing happened to me about a month ago. if you have time (and lots of cash), IRIS prints are nice. although they are glorified inkjet prints, they will print on a variety of support media. but the cost is rather high, and unless you sell a large number of prints, you may have difficulty making any real money on your prints (at least as far as signed and numbered prints go).
on the other hand, if you are not going to print any larger than 11x14 (13x19) then an epson 1270 is your best bet. affordable, easy to use, and produces beautiful images on a variety of media. this is soloution i came up with for my show, and it worked out very nicley.
the hype surrounding the epson 2000 can be bit misleading. it is archival, and prints COLOR beautifully, but it cannot print as well in B/W as the 1270. epson themselves attest to this. so if you plan on doing an B/W, steer towards the 1270. if you are goin all color, then the 2000 may be for you. hope this helps a bit. good luck with your show. by the way, you show isnt it pittsburgh, is it?

-- jerry hazard (hazard01@earthlink.net), August 03, 2000.

Here is the world's leading authority on permanence of the various processes. http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

-- Jim Steele (jdsteele@hotmail.com), August 05, 2000.