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All inks, dyes, paints and photographs fade. So it’s really a question of how do inkjet photographic prints compare. In particular, how do they compare to conventional photographic prints produced in a darkroom or by your local minilab?
Bright colours fade fastest - if you own a red car you probably know this already. Stability isn’t a new problem that affects only inkjet photo prints. Inks in many modern pens have very poor fade resistance. When I first started testing inkjet photos for fade resistance I wrote my notes below the image in black ink - just with a normal pen. Within a week it was very hard to read and by the end of a 3 months in the sun there was nothing there. Now I make notes with a CD pen or with pencil.
Since consumers started realising there was an issue here, all printer manufacturers have started making claims about lightfastness with their inkjet photo printers - but only if you use their ink cartridges and their paper. To be fair we can’t really expect them to test other people’s ink cartridges and paper. Most of the profit in making printers comes from ink and paper sales, so they do their best to stop you even considering using anyone else’s.
So is there a problem? Should you care? If you look at the tests below it’s obvious that both the prints tested have faded but while the amount is not that high with the Epson ink / Epson Premium Glossy Paper test, the cheap ink on independent paper test has turned green and faded very badly.
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