Aardenburg Imaging & Archives (AI&I) was founded in 2007 by Mark McCormick-Goodhart, formerly Senior Research Photographic Scientist for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and a founder of one of the first fully colour-managed digital fine art printing studios, and is housed in a fine nineteenth century house Lee, Massachusetts, USA. They are concerned with documenting digital printing technologies and a part of their programme is their innovative Digital Print Research Program
One point in my recent post How Long is a Hundred Years was about the limitations of the testing methods now accepted as a standard for ink jet prints, giving figures often called ‘Wilhelm years’ which are misleading, based on relatively high levels of fading or discolouration.
AI&I’s I* metric is an estimate of the light exposure in megalux hours before fading in a print becomes noticeable or the print shows physical damage. You can read more details about it on their web site, as well as seeing the ratings of some popular printer/ink/paper combinations. The actual exposure neede to cause noticeable fading will actually depend on the subject matter of the print and the colours it contains, and I* (which I assume is pronounced I-star) is given as a range.
One of the higher published ratings so far is for the Epson 4800 using K3 Ultrachrome inks on Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper at 61-70+ Megalux hours, while Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper Type II Lustre printed on a Fujifilm Frontier 390 runs in at around 16-20+ Megalux hours.
What this means in terms of years of course depends on the level of illumination used to display the prints. In the explanatory pdf you can download from the AI&I site (go to ‘Accelerated Ageing Tests‘ then select ‘Light Fade Test Results‘ and the link is above the results) it gives a simple conversion to ‘years on display‘ based on average light levels – simply divide the I* metric by 2.
Another AI&I programme of interest is ther real-world print monitoring which involves studying the actual deterioration of prints under display conditions. Presumably this will enable them in the longer term to assess and refine the connection between the accelerated ageing tests and actual print performance. They also intend this year to set up archives, a gallery and printmaking services.
AI&I is an organisation you can join for an annual fee – $55 Amateur, $95 Professional and $295 Corporate. Joining gets you access to their full set of test results and also entitles you to send in samples for testing to add to their database – which they intend to cover the widest possible range of materials.
Apart from the better basis of their methodology compared to current commercial services, the great thing about AI&I is the open nature of its testing, with all results being made available, rather than these being shrouded in commercial secrecy. It very much seems to be a service aimed at the print-making community and I hope will attract widespread support.