The Online Photographer

(Are inkjet prints really superior to traditional color printing methods? Ctein and I weigh in. See the last Featured Comment just added to the "Big Mystery" post.)

Mike
(Thanks to Ed)

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MHMG: "The fascinating thing about inkjet prints is that they aren't as homogeneous or consistent in appearance as more traditional photographic processes. Folks still call color choromogenic prints 'C-prints' as a holdover from a very early Kodak color paper that wasn't even on an RC base. The look just hasn't really changed all that much over the years. Ditto for Ilfochrome (a.k.a. Cibachrome) or Kodak dye transfer prints. They are all quite easy to recognize due to the unique constraints of the chemical and material processes involved. In contrast, Inkjet prints have an enormous degree of freedom with respect to both image-forming colorants and media. An inkjet print can be made to mimic many historic processes or it can be made to look like no other process that has ever come before it. So, it's all up to the printmaker what kind of aesthetic is going to be achieved with inkjet printing.

"Like many other reflection print processes, when made well, inkjet prints are amazing and when made poorly they are an embarrassment to be called photographs. That said,  on technical merits we can break the arguments about print quality down further:

1) As for sharpness and grain structure, even the best multi-channel inkjet printer screening patterns cannot match the super high resolution of a light sensitized analog print paper, but most optically enlarged negatives and slides could never make use of this exceptional print resolution unless the film was contact printed. This practical limitation gives today's digital image files and sharpening/noise reduction algorithms a chance to compete very well in terms of human perceived print sharpness and grain structure in the final print. This perceptual reality is especially true when making very large scale prints.

2) Color gamut of inkjet exceeds most traditional color processes with the possible exception of dye transfer (although dye transfer had a less than optimal cyan dye in particular), but even with as much control as the printmaker had over color and tone in a dye transfer print, the total color and tone control in digital imaging and inkjet printing far surpasses the control we had with analog processes.

3). With respect to overall print durability (which helps prints last longer) one has to be careful when debating inkjet versus traditional color processes. Uncoated inkjet prints do tend to be much more abrasion and scratch sensitive, but coatings can be used to create inkjet prints with as much or more physical durability as traditional silver gelation prints when the application requires it. As for light fastness, humidity resistance, gas fade resistance, and thermal stability, inkjet prints range from extremely fragile to far more stable than any other traditional color photographic processes depending on choice of colorant and media. In this regard, the printmaker must choose wisely...

"...Which brings the whole debate back to P+I+P+C!"

Before we leave the topic, I'd just like to quietly point out that all the objections to inkjet prints within the photography market are very reminiscent of the objections to photography itself, back in earlier days. Not creative enough, too mechanical and thus insufficiently expressive, too automatic, too easily duplicable (and thus not unique or limited), too common and accessible to everyone without discrimination, and so on*.

Of course none of that is actually true. Try getting a print today to look just like a particular photographer's print from an era past and gone—and you don't have to pick someone like Robert Demachy as an example, either; the films change, the papers change, the methods and even the visual taste involved is peculiar to each particular maker.

Ken Tanaka mentioned this the other day: when Walter Rosenblum made his own prints from Lewis Hine's original negatives and then used his status as a Hine expert to certify them as genuine, eventually people realized that the "fake" (modern) prints looked too much like Walter Rosenblum prints. In other cases where modern prints are made from historical negatives, too, experts (and sometimes even ordinary folks) can tell the difference. I saw some modern prints made from Lartigue negatives, and while I thought they were beautiful (I tend to like replicas), there was no mistaking them for vintage prints.

Another example. When Ctein and I were going through the back-and-forth process of printing my "Wisconsin #7" (the streetlight in the snow) for my last sale, we couldn't get it to look like my original prints of the picture—partly because I stupidly didn't keep a print for myself from the earlier sale, leaving Ctein without a guide print, but also partly because I was then using a paper that's no longer available and a printer that I no longer have.

At some point—with the accelerated pace of progress, probably sooner than we can guess—inkjet printers themselves will be replaced by a newer and more efficient technology—prints from which will look somewhat different. At that time, the prestige of "vintage" inkjet prints from the era when inkjet printers were ubiquitous will begin inexorably to rise—and thousands of photographers will wish they had made more inkjet prints of their old digital files when the process was still current and it was still easy to do so**.

Mike

[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said that Jim Hughes had mentioned the Hine/Rosenblum controversy. It was actually Ken Tanaka, who mentioned it in a comment to the "And the Winner Is" post. Apologies to both for the mistake. —Ed.]

*And thus, they're slow to be accepted as valid and valuable art...just as photography itself was slow to be accepted.

**I've been impressed by a certain development that I've seen in my own life and work. I was mostly a "darkroom nomad" during my heavy film-shooting years (from 1980 to 2000). I had my own darkroom a couple of times—never for very long—and otherwise I used darkrooms at schools where I was a student or schools where I taught. (Or just didn't have access to a darkroom at all.) I also was often short of having enough money for paper, too. Consequently I was always "putting off" making prints of negatives I liked; either I'd stop at the workprint stage and put off making the finished print, or I'd make one finished print and assume I could make more whenever I needed to.

In the meantime, the world changed. Even now I don't have time to make new wet prints from old negatives, and most of the papers available now don't fit the old negatives as well as they fit the papers they were made for. (See here if you don't know what I mean by "fit." Be warned, though, it's complicated.) Suddenly those old prints made when the negatives were made are indeed "vintage prints"—and I wish I'd made more of them when it was natural to do so.

Meanwhile, I'm doing the same damned thing now—I've got a collection of files awaiting printing, and I'm making the assumption in my head that I'll have time in the future to catch up. I guess I never learn.

P.S. That ghost story this morning? Completely made up.  :-)

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Bob Gary: "Absolutely the truth, I'm sure, for a lot of us. So, we all have generations of "vintage" print projects waiting to be done, and quite possibly may just skip the unprinted ones slated for the darkroom and print them out in inkjet. I've gone back to early 1912 negatives and had to scan and print for the present time, not bothering to "match" the end result with a corresponding original print. It's always going to be different. There always seems to be more old negatives than actual surviving prints that need to be done. And, there's as much fiddling with scanning parameters as there was with darkroom exposures and chemicals. Toss in the Photoshop techniques in lieu of the enlarger printing skills, and the current printing processes are just as intensive, yet different."

xtian: "I think you are absolutely & totally 'spot on' with your point. I would only add that this whole thing not only applies to inkjet prints but also to digital photography in general. I have said from the beginning that this bickering is a total rehash of went went on between painters and photographers beginning around 1848."

Richard Newman: "I think that part of the problem is that some people tend to consider the difficulty of the technique, time required to learn the technique, and the time required to create the image, as significant value factors in judging the quality of the image. Therefore, a photograph, which can be exposed, 'Photoshopped' and printed in a day cannot be as valuable as a sculpture, oil painting, or etching—even if the images are essentially identical. This was a factor in accepting photography as an art form (how could a Kodak 'point and shoot' print be valuable? Not much skill, or years to learn how to work the shutter). And it applies to print evaluation. They further justify it by pointing at the large percentage of prints that are mediocre at best, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of painters, sculptors and such were (and are) mediocre. If digital printing could be made more mysterious it might get better reviews."

Mike replies: Ansel Adams foresaw "electronic photography" (what we call digital), but if I remember correctly, he also said on a few occasions that he wished photography weren't so easy.  :-)

The following idea comes from Bruno Masset—it's his idea, not mine. (I just like it.)

He suggests that for high-end inkjet prints (distinguished from the kind of thing that gets spit out on bond paper by four-color dye printers all over the world) that "something technically correct (and therefore defensible) and bland (and therefore without any undesirable connotations)" is needed.

His suggestion is "IHD print," for "Incremental Halftone Deposition."

I looked it up, and "IHD" is also largely available—Microsoft now calls its the Advanced Content interactivity layer in HD DVD "HDi," and apart from that there are only four other entries for the acronym on Wikipedia's disambiguation page, none of them pertaining to imagemaking.

Bruno continues:

Incremental: Microscopically (at the dot level) and macroscopically (at the picture level), the inks are indeed deposited sequentially and incrementally by the print head(s).

Halftone: Just like halftones, inkjet printing is, at a fundamental level, a discrete, non-continuous, dot-based printing system.

Deposition: Self-explanatory.

Bruno adds: "one could also, if necessary, distinguish between 'Organic IHD process' (dye-based inks) and 'Inorganic IHD process' (pigment-based inks)."

Bruno didn't mention this, but I think that we also need a certification process for specific combinations of materials—a basic suite of test procedures that the community can agree on for determining a reasonable expectation of print life expectancy (LE) and decent handling properties.

I'm on thin ice here, because a number of organizations work in the field of materials testing and conservation and no doubt are much further along in their science and their procedures than I'm even aware of. And I don't have time to do original research into existing published International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards that relate to image permanence and life expectancy and durability. But what I would suggest is a new standard for Paper + Inkset + Printer (P+I+P) combinations that would "approve" a set of P+I+P materials and equipment as being a known quantity that come up to a baseline standard for quality, permanence, and handling properties.

Bruno's naming suggestion would distance premium inkjet prints from the (deserved) perjorative connotations of the worst practices of the medium, and an ISO standard approving specific P+I+P combinations would enable photographers to easily ensure that their choices of P+I+P combinations are acceptable to the collector and exhibition market, and it would create an objective standard so that galleries, museums and collectors didn't have to just take photographers' words that the work they're buying is "archival."

And of course an ISO certification for a paper-inkset-printer combination doesn't in the least limit the freedom of manufacturers or print creators. Manufacturers can make whatever they please and photographers can use whatever they please. This idea would just give a further option for those on the creation side who want assurance that they're working with the best materials, and those on the market side who want assurance that the prints they're trading and collecting were responsibly made and won't self-destruct.

If in the future you were to visit museums and see prints on the wall identified as a "Certified Inorganic IHD Print (2014)," it would be much more useful than just the words "inkjet print" or any of the random replacement desciptions that are now used haphazrdly. Like for instance "archival pigment print.*"

Bruno's original comment appears in its entirely in the Comments to the "Big Mystery" post.

Mike
(Thanks to Bruno)

*Because, really, anybody can slap the word "archival" on anything—especially if there's a financial inducement to do so—and no one can reasonably contradict the claim. Even the word "pigment" is suspect—were the inks pure pigment or simply a dye ink with some pigment added? And how can a dealer or museum reasonably stand by a claim of "archival pigment print" when the terms aren't defined and they're taking the artist's word for it anyway? And anyway nowhere in that casual description is the paper taken into account. It's all very suspect—and that must be hindering the acceptance of premium inkjet prints in the marketplace. When, really, the very best inkjet materials and the very worst inkjet materials are simply worlds apart.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Jeff: "Wilhelm Imaging Research (WIR) has long made attempts to achieve some degree of standardization…but that's a long topic. Even with such tests, real world print display conditions involve numerous other variables, e.g., lighting, glass, etc.

"And beyond that, there are other print techniques that likely help or hinder print longevity, and that's been true long before the advent of digital printing. How, for instance, are Paul Strand's silver prints affected by his sometimes use of varnish spray? Should he have been required to disclose that to print buyers? There are certainly modern day inkjet equivalents involving toning, etc.

"This is not a new issue and, as far as I know, there have never been agreed-upon standards, even for 'silver prints.' Why should this be any different? I think change (real and perceptual) will come based on the market, not based on some required standards. I don't collect vintage silver, or platinum, prints any differently."

Mike replies: You're kind of talking past me here, for which I might be to blame. I'm not talking about a standard for actual LE. I'm talking about a certification procedure for various specific combinations of materials and equipment, so that printing services, photographers, professionals, and other printmakers could easily determine whether their materials and equipment were considered "safe to use" or "acceptable to buyers" or "of known high quality" or whatever words you want to use.

I didn't even mention what the criteria for certification might be.

Thus, Brand E Model X printer might be certified to use with Y inkset but not with other inks; and Brand E Model Y printer with Y inkset might be certified if used with papers A, B, C, D, E, F, N, P, and Q but not with any other papers.

The advantage of this is that when subsequent buyers, exhibitors, and owners want to know if the materials used were of a certain quality, they'd have an objective measure for confirmation of that.

The certification might even use one of a number of actual independent standards as a qualification. For instance, certification might stipulate that the print meet either "Wilhelm Imaging Research Test L" or "Aardenburg Imaging Light Fade Test Z" as part of the criteria.

Get the distinction?

Trecento: "I have only one problem with your proposal: you want an ISO certification. I hate paying ANSI for the privilege of reading supposedly public standards. For instance, ISO 18915, "Methods for the evaluation of the effectiveness of chemical conversion of silver images against oxidation" (i.e. silver print permanence!) costs $114 USD. Erecting a paywall would significantly reduce the effectiveness of your proposal. As an alternative model, I would suggest something similar the different Open Source licensing models, like the LPGL. A nonprofit entity is created to hold the trademark for IHD, and creates a set of standards for how/whether prints can be marked as IHD."

Hugh Crawford: "I'm pretty sure that no one uses halftone screening which is an amplitude modulation technique. Everything I have seen uses stochastic screening.

"I'm not so sure about the incremental part either. Canon printers for instance seem to put down the different inks all at once, i.e., any one color drop of ink can have any of 10 other colors deposited over it.

"Deposition has a nice ring to it however.

"So: Variable Stochastic Deposition print?

"VSD also stands for the Swiss printers trade group, Variable Sized Dots, and Voltage Sensitive Dyes, which might confuse someone, but I wouldn't worry too much. And the Swiss printers trade group is probably too freaked out about inkjet technology in general to care.

"As an aside, I wouldn't want to get the whole organic vs. inorganic and dye vs. pigment terminology baked into the name. The average consumer has no idea what organic means. Gasoline is organic, water isn't. Lake pigments have pretty much the same performance as dyes. Some azo dye (see Cibachrome) is a lot more archival than some nonorganic pigments. Carbon and bone black is about as archival and organic as you can get, yet it gets listed as a non-organic pigment in some listings. Quinacridone seems to be a leading high-performance archival pigment, and it's organic.

"If the ink manufacturers would just tell what was in the ink rather than keeping it a secret, that would go a long way towards legitimizing inkjet printing. No artist paint manufacturer would try to sell ink or paint that didn't say what the pigment was.

"Painters used stuff like Alizarin Crimson, a.k.a. Turkey red or Mordant red 11, that faded away to nothing. Now painters are much more careful, yet I have never heard of anyone asking what pigments were used in a million dollar painting, and I doubt most artists would say. Most painters I know are more than a little proprietary about some of their pigments.

Crabby Umbo: "Regarding the word 'archival,' I remember calling the rep of a slipcase portfolio company because I found out the item wasn't made out of inert and safe material, and it it was labeled 'archival.' When I told them of my concerns they said: '...Well, we think it's made pretty well....' Didn't get it at all...."

Tuomas: "I understand the need to raise the status of 'archival inkjet prints,' but how about just calling them 'prints'? You know, like cellular phones are increasingly just phones and digital cameras are cameras."

Joe Holmes: "Wait a minute. Are we brainstorming a solution without a problem? Who's being duped by this 'dye ink with some pigment added'? Where are the collectors demanding refunds for fake archival prints? Where's the outcry that's being addressed? In my walk through this year's AIPAD show in NYC I saw plenty of inkjet prints selling for high prices."

Bron: "In my painter's hat, I own books on materials and methods dating back almost three-quarters of a century. Even the oldest offers advice on permanent pigments, fugitive pigments, and advice on admixtures that may cause problems.Pigments now all have color index numbers, as well as ASTM International permanency numbers, and most mixed artists paints have the index numbers. I can put together a palette that is completely permanent, based on permanent pigments. Doing that for inkjet inks would be a step in the direction you're advocating, and might lead to different palette choices of inksets, so an artist could choose certain colors balanced against permanence."

Michael Bearman: "I disagree. Standardization will create a race to the bottom, as everything at or above the minimum standard will be necessarily be equal (whether or not that is so); hence, it will be in manufacturers' interests only to build to the cheapest minimum. In any event, when has the longevity of art ever had anything to do with its value? Van Gogh's colours today are more than a bit different than when freshly painted. And Museums and galleries are stuffed to the gills with paintings, prints, etc. that cannot be removed from controlled environments."

Robert P: "I went to an opening of a photography exhibition where the prints were selling (and they did) for thousands. The photographer would not admit that they were inkjets, even though I knew that he had printed them himself on an Epson or an HP (I forget which). He was very insistent that they were not ink, but pigment, and he seemed to think I was trying to catch him out whereas I simply wanted to know what he had printed with, as they were stunning. One of the only times that I have seen a gallery be totally open about it was an Eggleston show in London a few years back when I was told they were Epson prints. I guess Eggleston was big enough for it not to matter."

Pete: "Think I'll just stick with Pigment on Paper. It doesn't sound like something someone in a lab came up with."

MHMG [Mark from Aardenburg Imaging —Ed.]: "I'm no stranger to certifications and the like. But honestly, artists will not and should not be subject to certifications. They should use whatever materials they wish to when creating their work. Likewise, museums and archives should never impose a litmus test of any kind for what is deemed worth collecting (and to my knowledge, with the exception of the personal tastes of individual curators, they don't).

"What is needed is a central database of P+I+P (actually P+I+P+C, where C is any possible further treatment like a coating) that informs both artist and collector of the fragility (or lack thereof) of the final work, and gives insight into what kind of optimal care is needed to care for that historic and/or artistic work over time.

"Consider the seminal work The Pencil of Nature by Henry Fox Talbot. If I were to run Talbot's 'Calotype' process through the Aardenburg light fade testing protocol it would probably receive a shockingly low rating of less than 1 megalux hour (six months or so at the industry-standard assumption of 450 lux for 12 hours per day) because the salted paper prints tipped into Talbot's book were all made before Sir John Hershel suggested sodium thiosulfate ('hypo' or 'fixer' to those of you old timers who remember spending time in a photographic darkroom) as a means to remove the residual silver halide crystals from the print. Competent museum curators understand that this early historic print process is light sensitive and have implemented strict policies to ensure that it's inherent fragility is 'rationed' for future viewing audiences wisely. As such, The Pencil of Nature, a work of art that we might 'certify' to last only six months in these modern times is still with us (albeit only about a dozen copies remain) after more than 175 years. I hope folks can now understand why Aardenburg Imaging and Archives doesn't try to reduce light fastness testing to a simple 'years on display' rating. The end-user or collector has a huge role in creating appropriate storage and display environments, and thus has a major say in how long a print will last."

I was having a conversation with a representative of Canson yesterday, and the subject turned to something I still consider a significant mystery. Why, when "Archival Pigment Prints" (read, inkjet done right) is by a comfortable margin the best color printing method in the history of photography, does inkjet printing continue to suffer from the persistent stigma of such low prestige?

Some Canson materials (along with a number of other selected papers you might be familiar with), are among the most beautiful materials ever made for color photographic printmaking. Surface, thickness, feel, flatness. The printing process is almost infinitely flexible and controllable, and the results quite easily possess the best archival life expectancy of any readily available, practical printmaking method. Yet inkjet is still the poor stepchild of print types.

I can think of ten ways to explain this. And yet none of them really make sense. Is it purely a matter of status and availability? Sometimes I think that if the finest inkjet methods had a distinctive name and a proprietary workflow, and an Epson Stylus Pro 3880 or a Canon Pixma Pro-1 cost $100,000 insteand of $1,000, people would be falling over themselves in their praise and covetousness.

It's just a very curious state of affairs, and one I wouldn't have thought would survive this long.

Mike

P.S. Canson sells an "Infinity Discovery Pack" that contains samples of 12 of its papers, so you can see and feel them for yourself.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Bryan Geyer: "Gosh—I'd guess that the reason is because inkjet prints were all so crummy, and faded so readily, for so many years. Yes, that was before the pigment ink era, but it was inkjet, and the stigma sticks."

Richard: "Some people still feel manual stick cars are better than automatic. [Wait—you mean they aren't? —Ed.] Some like records more than CDs or MPG files or any digital file. Some still much prefer film even though digital is also 'better' in so many ways. And some people much prefer classic lenses to 'BETTER' modern lenses that are sharper, more contrasty and less prone to flare (this is a bugaboo with me: cannot stand it when someone says a lens is better simply because it's sharper—I guess, if you're trying to shoot Air Force Test Charts). Mostly in this case though I think it's because inkjet printing is seen as simply press-the-button and walk away and easily duplicated over and over vs. a hand-crafted analog print."

Geoff Wittig: "I suspect it's the result of a misconception of what's actually involved in high quality inkjet printing. Most folks have clicked the 'print' button on their laptop and 12 seconds later gotten a mediocre print on Staples™ generic paper out of their inkjet, so how hard can it be?

"Pretty darn challenging, actually. It's true that once you have your workflow nailed down, you can reliably produce beautiful prints of uniform quality. But getting to that point requires painstaking experimentation with lots of trial and error, and endless proofing. Your raw file processing and Photoshop work (including color management, contrast 'budgeting' and sharpening routines) have to dovetail perfectly with the surface quality and warm/cool white of your chosen paper. Certain images really call for specific papers to bring out their best qualities, so you actually need a range of choices at your fingertips.

"The almost limitless permutations of digital processing/inkset/profiles/papers provides a huge toolkit allows you to squeeze out that last iota of image quality. But this is also why it's so challenging. My wife laughs at me for being so persnickety, but when I put a near-miss print next to a really good one, it's screamingly obvious."

Jack Luke: "I've been lucky enough to be printing on a 7900 and Hanuman 300 gsm fibre gloss stock for the past year in uni and it matches the quality of the C-types we have coming out of the RA-4 in most regards. I will say that one thing inkjet printing can't match is the feeling of depth you get from a high, high gloss C-type. Without waxing lyrical too much, the image seems to sit inside a C-type print as opposed to on the surface with an inkjet."

Kenneth Tanaka: "The pathology of this particular disorder starts with dealers. Dealers have infected collectors and museums with this prejudice against inkjet prints in an attempt to maintain preciousness, and prices, of chemical prints and photos. Of course art students pick this up and, not wanting to grow up as inferior artists, assume the same position. It's all very absurd and more than a little nauseating.

"But I'm happy to report that the fever seems to be breaking. I'm seeing more inkjet prints in the Art world, and fewer nonsense names for the method. Mercifully I think 'giclée,' the poster child for 'nonsense name,' is finally disappearing. 'Pigment print' seems to be the descriptive title being commonly adopted by major museums. Meanwhile, I've been experimenting with digital C-printing and have been finding it a very interesting printing technique. But that's a subject for another article."

Judith Wallerius: "I think the root of that low prestige lies in the impression of familiarity. The process of inkjet-printing is not different enough to commandeer the kind of respect the other photo processing procedures do. And it's difficult to truly appreciate archival vs. not archival quality unless you are years or even decades down the road and of one print is only a faded greenish impression left, while the other is still as vibrant as on the first day.

"People look at darkrooms full of chemicals and enlargers and it's an alien thing to most, full of steps in a process they don't comprehend. And they know that. They used to send off little metal containers that they knew they weren't to open themselves lest they'd destroy the content irretrieveably, and after a mysterious interlude they would receive envelopes with finished prints. There was a mystery to it, and an artist who was able to create and put to use all that themselves was a bit of a magician.

"That the quality of the modern inkjet printers is comparable to or can even surpass those processes doesn't matter so much when the printer looks just like a bigger version of the thing that's plodding along in the office or that they swear at when it gives mysterious error codes instead of printing. And even the size of the printer doesn't matter much, we've all seen huge printers or plotters in copy-shops for years. They look like the same thing that's now putting out those archival prints; there simply is nothing to be in awe of. With an inkjet-printer instead of darkroom work, the difference to the thing they already know has been reduced to a matter of degrees instead of being something completely other. That those degrees still make all the difference doesn't matter. It's not different enough to feel 'special,' and I don't see that changing anytime soon (or maybe even ever). I also doubt that a higher price point or proprietary work flow would change that, since people would still know what the process is—and even their office printer uses proprietary cartridges, so there's nothing impressive there.

"A distinctive name would help (hence the 'giclée print' cop-out that masks the archival inkjet print's true identity), but the process would still need to be sufficiently removed from being seen as inkjet-printing to eventually garner the same kind of respect / awe that traditional printing methods receive.

"Silly as it is, human nature demands something to have at least a bit of an air of 'I can't do that' for it to be seen as truly impressive (and, in turn, very simple things can impress people when they just think they're special and out of their range of ability or reach). Inkjet printing just doesn't fit that bill—no mystery, no magic to be found."

David Miller: "I can think of a couple of factors that are at play here. First, you cannot easily see the hand of the master in an inkjet print. Someone with a lot of digital processing and printing experience may appreciate the work that went into a superb print, but for most people it will be devalued by the conviction that 'anybody could do that.' What makes an Ansel Adams print more valued than one made by a highly skilled assistant? We intuit the hand of the master in the final product. (I've seen a number of stringed instruments built by Stradavari and other Italian masters of his time. There are elements in the workmanship that seem crude compared to a first-class factory-built 'replica.' But as a former luthier myself, I can see exactly how the maker held his knife, how he shaped a soundhole with a single powerful cut where a lesser mortal would have used five. The beauty and humanity of those old instruments is breathtaking.) Secondly, an inkjet print is devalued for the collector by the knowledge that it could be reproduced exactly by the pressing of a button—hence the inflated price for a 'limited edition' print. (As Mark Twain said, 'Buy land; they're not making it any more.')"

Rodger Kingston: "I printed Cibachromes for myself and clients for nearly 30 years, and I agree, by any comparison inkjet printing is an absolute breeze, and well-made inkjet prints can be as beautiful and permanent as any process, including my long-lost and oh-so-permanent Cibachromes. I suspect that the Rodney Dangerfield problem here may be that inkjet printing, itself, requires no hand work by the photographer or printer. All the work is done beforehand, in Photoshop or whatever, and when the image is 'ready,' all one has to do is to push the Print button of the ink jet printer. No artistry or craftsmanship involved; could that be why they don't get no respect?"

Ed: "You are working from a flawed premise. Inkjet prints are simply not the best color printing method in the history of photography. Any pure optical analog process eclipses them: dye transfer, Ciba, RA-4, etc."

Mike replies: I think they are, with the exception that most past techniques had distinctive "looks" that specific individuals might have liked and preferred. In terms of controllability, color purity, sharpness, lightfastness, enlargeability, and permanence, the best 2014 inkjet technology surpasses any and all "readily available, practical" traditional color techniques. I'm not sure about color gamut, and surfaces are a matter of taste. But even if you prefer the specific look of RA-4 prints, say, I can't see how you can make a defensible case that they are technically superior. They really just aren't.

Tech. Ed. Ctein adds: Speaking to the point that Mike didn't—color gamut—inkjet printing is vastly superior to any chromogenic or dye-bleach process. This isn't debatable.

Dye transfer is something of a red herring, as it isn't accessable to 99.9% of the photographers out there. But if it must be discussed, one must consider the substantial number of consummate dye transfer printers who chose* to switch to a digital printer. Any assertion that dye transfer prints are objectively superior has to be questioned closely.

As Mike said, we're talking about broadly objective qualities, here, not what someone personally likes or doesn't.

(*Yeah, it was a choice—dye transfer supplies are still available to the very few that are dedicated to the process.)

"Manuscript" is a word that originated in 1590–1600, from the medieval Latin manuscriptus, meaning "written by hand."

Traditionally, penmanship was taught in schools and there were various matters of etiquette that pertained: personal notes and letters from gentlemen and ladies were properly written by hand, for example. Of course for centuries there was no alternative.

And of course a person's signature was her mark and affadavit in the days before magnetic strips and ID numbers. It was a sign attesting to personal attention and approval, a source-mark. The signature of Elizabeth the First of England was appropriately regal.

The colonial merchant John Hancock's signature was so admired that his name became a slang synonym for "signature." More recently, the U.S. Treasury Secretary's literally loopy signature got a lot of attention because it goes on all the money printed during his tenure. Many people like the idea of Jack Lew's loops on the money.

Handwriting itself is supposed to be a sort of fingerprint. There are handwriting analysts and forgers of handwriting (and of signatures) and charlatans who claim to decode personality traits from a person's handwriting.

Funny thing is, though—I don't have any handwriting.

Well, I sort of do, of course. But what I mean is that I don't write by hand and never have very much. When I was young I wrote letters constantly, but they were all (Emily Post turns over in grave) typed. I write to you more or less every day, but it's all typed into the ether and almost never becomes ink on paper at all. The byline at the bottom is typed.

I've been aware as I signed prints yesterday that there was something faintly contrived in that act. I'm not a Dickensian businessman whose signature is required on a hundred documents a day. I can go a year without signing anything other than a check, and I don't pay for things with checks very often any more either. Also, I have physical difficulty signing prints. My hand cramps up and my mind gets the yips (I could never write a signature like Jack Lew's, for instance—I'd constantly be making too many or too few loops). I ruined not one but two of Ctein's beautiful prints yesterday by simply messing up the signature. Ack, in the immortal words of Bill the Cat.

So I think I've decided that this last print sale is the last time I will sign any of my prints.

Peter Turnley has written eloquently here of the meaning, to him, of the act of signing a print, and how memorable it was for him when he first saw Henri Cartier-Bresson signing his. Anyone who signs their prints should continue doing so proudly and without apology. However, as Ken Tanaka mentioned in the comments yesterday (and which I've since confirmed with a couple of collectors I know), collectors now are just as happy with prints signed on the back (verso when referring to a sheet of paper, the front being recto), and a stamp is as good as a signature.

What's a stamp?

Fortunately, Luminous-Lint has collected many examples, and has a nice page explaining the various types.

Studio stamps, courtesy Luminous-Lint. The one in the middle
is Gertrude Kasebier's.

More about this later, but if a rubber stamp on the back will satisfy posterity and the market, I think, personally, that I'm going to switch over to a stamp as soon as I work out the details.

Pending further research. I'll keep you posted.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka and Cal Amari)

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post got recto and verso recto'd and verso'd! Sorry for the mix up. —Ed.

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Phil: Get one of these:

Winsor: "I for one treasure the 'AA' initials on a couple my hung prints indicating that he approved the prints made by an assistant. I don't know about collecting and debating the effect on value, but I certainly appreciate the connection to photographer of a real signature no matter how tortured or abbreviated. A stamp just moves away from that and seems to say that so many prints were made it is not a work of art, just a manufactured object. A stamp is sort of like a title page in a book. People still want a signed first edition."

John Krumm: "A stamp sounds about perfect for me as well. My handwriting is not very good, and my signature only OK. When I have signed prints in the past I can't get myself to relax and sign like I might a check. So I draw the signature slowly, which usually doesn't look so great. No fun. I suppose you could even stamp the paper on the back ahead of time, to avoid messing up the print later."

Steven Willard: "Another option is a 'chop' stamp which is the Asian version of a rubber ink stamp that are frequently seen on Japanese and Chinese prints or paintings. They are custom made and closely held and are used in place of a signature."

Stephen Gilbert: "Hey, if it's good enough for Walker and Weegee...I think the stamps are quite cool, in an old-timey kind of way. Maybe you could solicit designs?"

Jamin: "Well, it was a good story and I had to read more, but according to Wikipedia Jacob Lew changed his signature just so new money wouldn't have those loops."

Nick Rains: "I think signing demonstrates 'contact' between the artist and the print and it adds an analogue element in a digital world. I too am left handed and totally get your cramping and the 'yips' when starting to sign a print. I once got tangled up signing a 60x30" Cibachrome print and had to re-print it."

Mike replies: Ouch.

Yesterday, Richard Alan Fox asked me what pen I'm using to sign my prints.

Complicated question.

You might recall that some time ago I told you that I'd some online research and bought a handful of different pens to try. I was after something that wouldn't damage prints, was considered permanent, and didn't smudge.

I then did various trials with the six or seven types of pens I bought from various sources. The one I ended up using the most is labeled "Kaiser CD/DVD Pen." I bought two of these, from different sources, one of which (if memory serves) was just advertised and sold as an archival marker for negatives and film.

Rather incredibly, I can no longer find this pen online at all—there's a different pen that comes up under that name, but it doesn't look like the two I bought. C'mon now! That was only six months ago. But the product I have seems either to have changed skins or gone extinct.

The Kaiser pens I have are probably made by Staedtler. They seem very similar to the Staedtler Lumocolor permanent CD/DVD 310. (Note that the pen at the link comes only in a .4 mm width. The ones I'm using are not marked, but have at least .6 and probably 1 mm tips. You might want to check out this one as well, which comes in three widths.)

This Pilot pen seemed to have the best writing properties on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique fiber-base paper—although as you can see at the link, the performance information provided is neither very exhaustive nor very reassuring—closely followed by the Prismacolor Premier Illustration markers. The Sakura Pigma Micron pens smudged the most of all the ones I have, so I eliminated those early on.

So, can I recommend any of these?

No.

I mean, not necessarily. I don't have the ability to do adequate tests—I can't guarantee to you that they'll work the way the manufacturers say they do. All I did was try out their writing properties, evaluate the way they look, and test that they were smudge-proof on the papers I'm signing. That's all. I picked the pen I used to sign most of the prints (the Kaiser) because it was the most smudge-proof (I'm left-handed, so smudging can be a problem). Beyond that, I'm trusting that I wouldn't have bought these if the online description (which, in the case of the Kaisers, as I said, I can't even track back to, it turns out) didn't look appropriate, and I'm simply trusting that those descriptions were accurate and truthful.

That's not good enough for me to make a recommendation to others.

Good luck. When it comes to pens, it's truly a dense forest out there.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

robert e: "Thanks for the report. Timely for me, as I mean to try out Canson Baryta in the near future, and I'm wondering if graphite will work on that. I'll report back in the event I have to try pens and find something interesting, but I'm hoping I can stick with graphite. I feel (don't actually know for sure) that it's the most benign option, and we know it's stable. Yes, it can be erased, but who's going to do that to a signed print they bought and framed? Plus, it's cheap. I just came across this: apparently archival standards for pens are covered by ISO 11798. Googling turns up at least a couple of European pen makers with certified inks. (ISO 18916 covers general imaging materials.) FEI, Mike's original pen hunt article is here."

Mike replies: Pencil doesn't work on the Canson paper Ctein used for my prints (a particularly beautiful paper, by the way—I think it looks as good as any light-sensitive paper I ever used in the darkroom).

I should have referred back to that original article myself. It appears my Kaiser pens were the "Kaiser-Schreiber film marking pen" recommended (but not endorsed, n.b.) by the Library of Congress Preservation Department that I referred to in that post. It also turned out that the "Hollinger non-fading black Pigma pen" that I got from Hollinger Metal Edge was the same pen. That pen now looks different: here it is from Hollinger. If you buy it from Amazon or B&H Photo you either have to buy a set of four colors or, if you want just the black color, a box of 40 pens.

Frank Petronio: "If it's an inkjet, I just add my name in small but contrasting type, a nice sans-serif like Frutiger Roman or Bold, over the image at whichever corner it is the least distracting. I adjust the translucency to be legible but quiet. Sacrilegious I know but it suits the medium and never smudges or gets cut off. For years I tried various pens and none of them were ideal."

Mike replies: That's too non-standard for the art world, but, interestingly, I used to do the same thing to add photographer's names to magazine covers. (Hey, a photo magazine should give the cover photographer credit on the cover itself, don't you think? It's what I thought, anyway.)