Papers to minimise fade with aftermarket dye inks.

[Ink stained Fingers]

your experience is quite frustrating overall , and such business not too much fun for the seller either with all that risk and additional handling involved. No wonder that such papers are not widely available anymore.

 

[peter D]

It is puzzling to someone from a small country like myself just why the emphasis of the seller on moving huge volumes and their inability to contemplate what is needed to get sample volumes safely out to an international customer who might be running a large commercial wide format printer. It's as if their market is direct to customers who operate these types of printers putting through volumes requiring pallet loads of paper (maybe a mixed paper type order). There's nobody that I know of in New Zealand that could economically import a sufficient volume of a specialised paper like the swellable and their existing orders of other papers are probably from western manufacturers that don't make swellable anymore.

I recall that you found that the samples of A4 size that you received exhibited paper curl indicative of a being cut from an existing roll rather than pulled from stocks of prepacked flat sheets. That might be an indication that the demand for flat sheets of swellable is as underwhelming in China as it is in the West.
I've found that importing boxed A3+ sheets from Amazon is expensive for freight because it falls into volumetric pricing for freight and also Amazon invariably package the A3+ packets inside a much larger standardised box.
There is no problem with US letter size of 8.5X11 inch (a standard Amazon box is a snug fit) but A3+ flat sheet freight can be punishing.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

I think there only a few fans for swellable papers left around the world, Baoding is doing their business most likely with print service companies domestically, and that's it. There is no reliable supply and decent pricing for any end user available - not to consider some surplus inventory at a few locations.
Part of the problem is the pretty low awareness of end-users for the issues around fading - ozone/UV induced, nobody seems to care, no supplier publishes some relevant data, and the subject of fading is not discussed in any media - printing or photography oriented. And you can see this as well as the very low attention to the latest test run at Aardenburg is getting by their members - the funding just lacks support
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/portfolio/inks-and-media-testing-2017/
You may argue that the sellers of all those materials under test rather should pay for the testing, but the circle is closing here - why if nobody cares anyway ?
What are the alternatives - use pigment inks which is an approach widely supported with hardware, inks and all that by Epson, Canon or HP and others.
All additional methods and options - gloss/chroma optimizer , as well with dye inks are discussed elsewhere, requiring additional handling, multiple print cycles , other color profiles etc which make such methods not attractive either.
So just ignore the fading issue to make your life easier.....

 

[peter D]

Thanks for the link to Aardenberg Imaging. I see what you mean as regards the lack of interest from the members. Also Aardenberg don't seem to be seem to give much weight to gaseous influences on inks either as they seem to concentrate on about light exposure followed by dark storage as it relates to yellowing.
I'm very grateful that you sent me the Baoding swellable sample papers and that I was able to do the fade test for ozone and light before I placed my order for a quantity of Baoding swellable paper.
For my own use here in New Zealand where anything specialised is hard and expensive to obtain, running a dye printer with after market inks is gives me gorgeous wide gamut prints that are economic to produce and so far the printer has been trouble free after years of occasional use even after long periods of down time. The swellable paper import problems were significant but with attention paid to controlling UV exposure of those prints that are on display I'm confident that this paper will virtually eliminate the quite serious fading due to gaseous (ozone) exposure.
As Mikling at Precision Colors has observed the printed colours are very intense with this type of paper compared with the microporous types.
With two rolls yielding 36.6 square metres of paper I think it will be a while before I need to worry about resupply, and most likely the printer will have started to wear out by then.

I had hoped that other members of this forum who are using dye printers would be able to benefit positively from my experience but it may be that only a vendor on AliExpress who is prepared to act as middleman for smaller quantities of boxed flat sheets will solve the supply problems.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Also Aardenberg don't seem to be seem to give much weight to gaseous influences on inks either as they seem to concentrate on about light exposure followed by dark storage as it relates to yellowing.

http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/portfolio/gas-fade-testing-unit/

Cancelled due to lack of funding - no interest by anybody - so much for that

 

[mikling]

I think there only a few fans for swellable papers left around the world, Baoding is doing their business most likely with print service companies domestically, and that's it. There is no reliable supply and decent pricing for any end user available - not to consider some surplus inventory at a few locations.
Part of the problem is the pretty low awareness of end-users for the issues around fading - ozone/UV induced, nobody seems to care, no supplier publishes some relevant data, and the subject of fading is not discussed in any media - printing or photography oriented. And you can see this as well as the very low attention to the latest test run at Aardenburg is getting by their members - the funding just lacks support
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/portfolio/inks-and-media-testing-2017/
You may argue that the sellers of all those materials under test rather should pay for the testing, but the circle is closing here - why if nobody cares anyway ?
What are the alternatives - use pigment inks which is an approach widely supported with hardware, inks and all that by Epson, Canon or HP and others.
All additional methods and options - gloss/chroma optimizer , as well with dye inks are discussed elsewhere, requiring additional handling, multiple print cycles , other color profiles etc which make such methods not attractive either.
So just ignore the fading issue to make your life easier.....

Swellable papers were completely lost to just about every consumer who purchased them. They were hell for retailers because customers would return them because they did not understand what they had purchased. The Paper mfrs went onto to the waterproof spree with microporous and that was a very popular thing. No wonder the swellable died a quick death. Now combine this with the push to pigments which are essentially incompatible with swellable and there was no shelf space remaining.,,,...Now get this ,,,,,,then the ink sellers went onto pushing that their dye inks were waterproof. What a business with informed sellers and buyers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I posted that swellable was a solution to ozone fading issues on dpreview and someone associated I think with aardenburg then dismissed the aspect of swellable going dark when stored in the dark or something. But that was illogical because the primary use of swelllable would be prints being displayed. In storage, you'd hardly be affected by ozone so why use it in a photo album?. Aardenburg also does not get that not everyone can afford OEM inks either. I'll leave it there but from a real world practical standpoint I also do not see the results reported by them in the real world either even on pigments. I'll say that their science is like someone purchasing an amplifier solely on distortion specs which may look wonderful but sound like crapola. Maybe they have overlooked something , well many years ago I knew from the start that they were neglecting ozone completely as a variable. That would mean that all prior benchmarks and tests were invalid once they had realized ozone was a player in tests....
I've seen the performance of swellable in real world environments and my results indicate that for many people who refill and want that special print last longer when displayed it is a real alternative. I would NOT recommend it for all prints unless you have a large wall space for all your prints.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

Wilhelm Research was/is doing some ozone related testing, their reports are organized quite differently and it is more
difficult to find a particular printer/paper/ink combination in the collection of their reports, and it does not make it easier for a customer who might be interested in some data for a purchasing decision.
http://www.wilhelm-research.com/
When I'm looking around into popular magazines - photo or electronic - they don't care about fading at all, they barely touch ink/paper performance with a look to the gamuts , 9600 dpi appear to be more important. There is one exception with the c't computer magazine which does a (rather limited) fading test on the printers they test - fading under strong visible light as an accelerated test for 100 hrs and then measuring/judging the outcome which at least gives some chance to compare some inks.

 

[peter D]

I posted that swellable was a solution to ozone fading issues on dpreview and someone associated I think with aardenburg then dismissed the aspect of swellable going dark when stored in the dark or something. But that was illogical because the primary use of swelllable would be prints being displayed. In storage, you'd hardly be affected by ozone so why use it in a photo album?.

"Swellable going dark" ? Seems odd to me as I have a few prints made on HP Swellable paper and stored in an album, but never noticed them going dark. Also I remembered a comment from a thread on the same subject posted on Photo.net back in late 2014 which doesn't support this assertion - "The best result I ever got was with a swellable paper, a test print I did 3 years ago has been in bright sunlight ever since and a strip I cut off and kept sealed in the dark is very close to a perfect match. But I don't know of any swellable papers currently available."

So what is being claimed here as regards "swellable going dark ......." is the paper itself going dark (doesn't seem likely as that would affect shelf life) or is the ink going dark (we know that can be probably be discounted) or is it a combination of the ink and the paper going dark, ie. a reaction between the ink and the swellable layer of the coating that is somehow enhanced by being kept in the dark.
Sounds curiously like the anecdote about politicians treatment of the voting public being compared to mushroom farming - ie. being fed bulls..t and kept in the dark.
Seriously do the swellable papers grow fungus or something inside the coating after years of being kept in the dark?
Also isn't it an advantage to keep papers containing optical brighteners away from undue exposure to UV light?

 

[peter D]

Wilhelm Research was/is doing some ozone related testing, their reports are organized quite differently and it is more
difficult to find a particular printer/paper/ink combination in the collection of their reports, and it does not make it easier for a customer who might be interested in some data for a purchasing decision.
http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

I've also looked at Wilhelm-Research's stuff and had the same difficulty trying to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I remember a long while back trying to find a definitive report on the Canon ChromaLife 100+ inkset and not having much success.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

The issue of the fading of OBA's has been brought up above, let me refer you to a recent test how quickly they may disappear, OBA's don't have a good long term stability once they are exposed which raises the principal question about their need at all.
https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...nce-the-fading-of-dye-inks.12326/#post-106466