Photographic Prints Research Articles

New and Coming ISO Image Permanence and Durability Standards and How They Promote the Photo Fulfillment Industry

Recently published ISO permanence and durability standards, along with soon-to-publish standards in progress, will provide standardized testing and reporting of image permanence and durability performance. By using standardized methods for testing and reporting, companies can assess and promote product performance in a way that is easily comparable by both professional fulfillment laboratories and consumers. In addition, a new ISO joint working group has been formed that will mirror the ongoing convergence of printing technologies covering both the traditional photographic and graphic arts based printing. This paper will provide an overview of the new standards, the new joint working group, and the benefits these will provide in promotion of hard copy printing throughout the photo fulfillment industry. Introduction As noted in the goals of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the purpose of standardization is to help make industry more efficient and effective, with standards used as strategic tools for business to level the playing field and facilitate free and fair global trade. In the context of ISO Technical Committee 42 (TC42) on Photography, Working Group 5 is involved in the development of standards relating to the physical properties and image permanence of photographic materials. These standards are aimed at providing test methods for the measurements of stability of the photographic as well as the physical durability of the substrates and materials used to produce the image. With the growth of digital imaging and new digital print materials in addition to traditional silver halide materials, new tests methods were developed to cover the new print technologies of ink jet, thermal dye transfer, and electrophotographic media. Further, these new technologies, especially electrophotographic, have resulted in the convergence of the production of images from the traditional photographic sources with those using graphic arts technologies. A detailed discussion of standards published in 2011 and 2012 was reported in a previous paper [1]. This paper will provide a brief discussion of standards published in 2013 and those nearing publication, as well as the benefits to the industry of all the recently published standards on image permanence and durability. 2011-2012 Published Standards ISO 18930:2011 – Imaging materials — Pictorial colour reflection prints — Methods for evaluating image stability under outdoor conditions Published in September 2011, this standard provides standardized test procedures to evaluate image stability both in real-time outdoor weathering tests and in accelerated laboratory simulations of the weathering process. ISO 18936:2012 – Imaging materials -Processed colour photographs -Methods for measuring thermal stability Published in April of 2012, this standard provides the methods and procedures for measuring the long-term dark storage, i.e., thermal stability, of color photographs. In the long term, the vast majority of photographic images ultimately end up stored in the dark so the importance of this standard cannot be understated. The standard looks at the two common paths of thermal degradation of an image, colorant loss and D-min increase. ISO 18937 – Imaging materials — Photographic reflection prints — Methods for measuring indoor light

Musing with the muse in the photographically illustrated Marble Faun

This paper proposes a new reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Marble Faun, as this novel directly addresses the topics of the “Musing in the Museum„ session: it is famous (infamous!) for its long descriptions of Roman museums and the artworks therein, leading it to be actually used as a guide book; from about 1865 to 1920, English and American tourists would make their own choice of illustrations by selecting between 15 and 150 small photographic prints sold by Italian booksellers, who mounted them and rebound their now “extra-illustrated„ volumes. It is the world's first interactive book, and no two copies are the same. So much is known, and well documented. This paper follows on from my previous work (mostly historical) and examines two phenomena in particular.Firstly, the hybrid nature of the personalised, portable museum: how certain readers, whose copies have come down to us, have allowed their personal interpretations and affinities to seep through merely by their choice of “exhibits„ how the walls of the museums disappear thanks to collections of photographs that create an “imaginary museum„ how the logic of the collection, and the logic of the novel, both conspire with the tourist to “level„ the different photographic subjects, so that a monument and a “peasant in typical costume„ both become “museum pieces„· and literary fictions.

Test Methods for the Long-Term Permanence Behavior of Photographs and Fine Art Prints Made with Large-Format Flatbed Printers Using UV-Curable Pigment Inks

Test Methods for the Long-Term Permanence Behavior of Photographs and Fine Art Prints Made with Large-Format Flatbed Printers Using UV-Curable Pigment Inks

Tone-mapping and dynamic range compression using dynamic cone response

Over the last several decades, the tone-mapping and color correction methods have been incorporated into the display device such as LCD/LED display device or the photographic print. However, conventional methods are based on Gray-World Assumption using spatial smoothing filter to estimate the local illumination component. For this reason, most of these methods have several problems like visual perception problem, scale the contrast, gray-out, color distortion (dominate color, halo-artifact) and so on. Accordingly, this paper presents a color correction method using the dynamic cone response function based on human visual perception. The proposed method consists of tone-mapping and dynamic cone response. The tone-mapped image is obtained by using chromatic and achromatic colors. Thereafter, the resultant image is processed through the dynamic cone response function, and it is to estimate the dynamic response of human eye as well as to deal with mismatch between a real scene and the rendered image. The experimental results show that the proposed method yields better performance of color correction over the conventional methods.

Diving into the Human Psyche

As I regularly invite my clients to inhale and exhale and connect with their breath, their bodies’ sensations, their hearts, and deeper parts of themselves through the expressive arts, I find inspiration and resonance in Vincent Ward’s art works. Vincent Ward (b.1956) is one of the most original and acclaimed New Zealand artists, and some have called him a visionary. His latest exhibitions, Inhale/Exhale were held simultaneously at the Gus Fisher Gallery, in the University of Auckland and the Wallace Arts Centre at the Pah Homestead in July 2012. Inhale was a cinematic installation while Exhale showcased painting and photographic print. I visited both exhibitions and attended some of the talks.

Respons Khalayak terhadap Vandyke Brown Print

This article discusses the forms of old print socialization to the community through the implementation of promotional mix method. The efforts were made to encourage the demand for old print products effectively to potential target audiences as well as looking for markets that form the foundation needs to be prepared. Print method that socialized is vandyke brown print. This method, based on the SWOT analysis is potentially the largest to be marketed to the public. The activites of promotional mix in this research are socialization, recruitment, workshop for potential stakeholders, such as photography business, Student Activity Unit, photography community, and high school students / vocational and promotion in various media. The result of socialization through the promotional mix shows that the target audience wants utilize old photographic print in their activities. They want to be able to do their own old printing process the print, the constraint is plagued with expensive materials. It cannot be purchased in retail. Audience response in this study should be followed by opening a new market space for the old print in Indonesia. One of the the new market here is old print service print services print and sales of chemical and materials to print with the old method of print.

Algorithms for photo book authoring

Photo books are a convenient and attractive product for printing and storage of personal photographs. However, the creation of a photo book requires a lot of manual work and time. The automation of operations will attract new users and will make it possible to create more photo books. Algorithms should be sufficiently fast enough, tune in to the tastes and habits of the user, and ensure a quality of work that satisfies the user. We propose several adaptive algorithms for creating photo books, i.e., the recognition of normal quality photos based on active learning, clustering images by event, selection of the most attractive photos, automatic placement of images on the page, and creation of collages. Approaches are also proposed for the adjustment of algorithms to the tastes and habits of the user in the process of operation.

Evaluation of the Long-Term Permanence of Digital Photographic Prints and Photobook Pages

From the earliest examples of human-created images – such as depections of Bison and other animals that were painted from 14,000 to 40,000 years ago the walls of the Altimira cave in Cantabria, Spain – images and texts have been preserved as physical objects. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which are more than 2,000 years old and consist of carbon based ink inscribed on parchment, lay hidden in caves in the Qumran area near the Dead Sea in Israel until they were discovered in 1946. Preserved in earthen jars in the low-humidity desert environment, the Dead Sea Scrolls are important historical examples of records made with intrinsically long-lasting materials. In the digital age, for the first time in human history, most images and textual information are no longer being preserved as physical objects. Instead, digital images and other records are stored as coded electronic files using the ever-changing technology of hard drives, solid-state flash memory, and magnetic tape systems. Archivists refer to such records as "machine-readable records," which require very specific software and electronic hardware preserved with the digital records to enable future retrieval, viewing, and printing in the future. In contrast, photographic prints and photobooks are physical objects that require neither special hardware nor software to be viewed. Archivists call these "human-readable records." Like the Dead Sea Scrolls, images and texts made with inherently stable materials, can be preserved, accessed, and viewed for thousands of years into the future without any technological aids. This paper discusses the evolution of accelerated aging tests for traditional and digital photographic prints and photobook pages, beginning with the classic 1970 paper by Peter Z. Adelstein, C. Loren Graham, and Lloyd E. West, "Preservation of Motion-Picture Color Films Having Permanent Value," published in the Journal of the SMPTE, which describes the application of predictive accelerated multi-temperature Arrhenius test to evaluate the dark storage permanence properties of color films stored at different temperatures, Utilizing data from accelerated aging tests, guidance is provided in the selection of the longest lasting materials to produce digital photographic prints and photobook pages. When carefully displayed and stored, these printed images and texts – like the Dead Sea Scrolls – can last far into the future.

Electrostatic Removal of Loose Particulate Surface Contamination from Historical Photographs / Elektrostatische Abnahme lose aufliegender partikulärer Verunreinigungen von historischen Photographien / Dissolution électrostatique des particules libres contaminant la surface de photographies historiques

AbstractThis article discusses the use of electrostatic cleaning technology to remove loose particulate surface contamination - which here includes microbial contaminants such as spores, conidia and hyphal fragments - from two 19th century albumen photographs mounted on cardboard. The results of this study, obtained using light microscopy, SEM/EDX and microbiological methods, as well as conservators' visual evaluation, show that the technology is fundamentally suitable for removing microbial contamination from photographic prints and their cardboard mounts. Cleaning the surface four times with electrostatically charged foils reduced the microbial contamination by up to 70%. The surface of the albumen print, which is sensitive to abrasion, was not harmed, and its characteristic features were not changed. The photographs, which were partly delaminated from the cardboard support and the mechanically weakened cardboard, could be treated without creating any additional damage.

Adhesives used for mounting photographic prints of the 19th and early 20th centuries

This paper is the result of research conducted to determine the types of adhesives used to mount print photographs up until 1920. Sources consulted included conservation literature, historical photographic journals and the relevant trade and patent literature. A total of 185 recipes were found. The adhesive recipes were inventoried and the various constituents of these recipes are discussed, particularly in reference to their possible effects on solubility and permanence. Along with the recipes, a short history of adhesives for photographs is provided, including a discussion on mounting methods. Pre-1920 photographers were concerned with all issues of permanence, and adhesives were recognised as a potential source of deterioration. This would appear to have led to a generally conservative choice of adhesive. The identified recipes tended to be simple, with 41.6% consisting only of the adhesive material and its solvent. Starch and gelatine were the most common adhesives used, with dextrin and gum arabic also used frequently. Less common were rubber, animal glue, shellac, flour and gum tragacanth. Fish glue, mastic, balsam, casein, egg, elemi and gutta percha were used occasionally. About a quarter of all recipes contained more than one adhesive material, with common mixtures including gelatine, gum arabic or dextrin mixed with starch or dextrin mixed with gelatine. When additional ingredients were added, these were most often preservatives, such as carbolic acid or essence of clove, or humectants, such as glycerine and sugar.

The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918 by Elizabeth Edwards (review)

Reviewed by: The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918 by Elizabeth Edwards Owen Clayton (bio) The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination, 1885–1918 by Elizabeth Edwards; pp. 1–326. Durham; London: Duke UP, 2012. $26.00 paper. The survey Movement inspired dozens, perhaps hundreds, of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographers to tour the streets of British towns, cities, and villages, recording sites of historical interest and documenting local and national histories. Yet the movement, despite having provided a permanent photographic record of the British past, has been largely forgotten. Elizabeth Edwards’s new book changes that. The Camera as Historian contains a staggering amount of research. Having visited many archives and local libraries, its author has uncovered a wealth of material, much of which has never been analyzed as part of the Survey Movement. The result is a truly impressive piece of historical excavation, an ethnographic study into what Edwards calls the “historical imagination” of the years 1885 to 1918. The Survey Movement, which was at its peak during this period, has been sidelined by much subsequent scholarship. When it has been analyzed, it has usually been seen as primarily the work of one man: Sir Benjamin Stone, Conservative MP and founder of the National Photographic Record Association (npra). Since Stone’s own photographs tend toward the nostalgic and picturesque, historians have often seen the Survey Movement itself as embodying these qualities. The Camera as Historian complicates this view by examining the social and cultural conditions that led to the movement and by paying attention to the small army of amateurs who took most of its images. By doing so, Edwards recovers the Survey Movement as both a practice and an experience—as, for example, when she discusses photographic walks, [End Page 139] which were organized by camera clubs and local surveys. During these walks, amateurs would tour their local area looking for sites of historical worthiness. One of the book’s strengths is the way in which it illuminates the role of these previously overlooked photographers. The amateur photographers were managed according to the rules of local and national surveys. Rules typically included a ban on photographic manipulation, stipulations about how pictures were to be taken and the materials to be used in photographing and displaying the images. Edwards highlights these latter elements in chapter 3, in which she constructs a particularly compelling argument. This chapter examines “the technical and material aspects of photography” that were “integral to articulating, enhancing, and maintaining” an ideology of photographic objectivity (80). Profound concerns about photographic loss and entropy led to the formation of “regulatory ideals” concerning the correct use of “plates, lenses, labels, and boxes” (97). Such material features of photographic creation, printing, storage and display are, as Edwards notes, “too often absent from the consideration of the ways in which photography makes its meanings” (97). By analysing these aspects, the author convincingly argues that the Survey Movement, far from being directed by an all-powerful npra, was in fact “dispersed, various, and too diverse to be effectively controlled” (110). This concern with materiality changes the way in which scholars think about the Survey Movement and also has wider implications for photographic study generally. In a later chapter on surveys and local identity, Edwards goes on to argue that the movement was decentralized rather than being controlled by luminaries such as Stone. Edwards’s concern is not with photographs as representation, and so she does not often attempt to “read” survey photographs. Given that she examined approximately 55,000 images, one can see the wisdom of this approach! Instead, she looks for patterns that emerge from the archives, including tropes like the parish church or village green. More than simple necessity, this methodology enables her to draw larger conclusions than would have been possible otherwise. Rather than echo scholarship that sees the Survey Movement as purely nostalgic, Edwards once again nuances critical understanding by showing that a significant minority of images were concerned with the industrial present, as well as with a possible future in which record photographs would be used as a guide to the past. One important implication of this argument...

Pseudoisochromatic test plate colour representation dependence on printing technology

The aim of the study is to determine best printing technology for creation of colour vision deficiency tests. Valid tests for protanopia and deuteranopia were created from perceived colour matching experiments from printed colour samples by colour deficient individuals. Calibrated EpsonStylus Pro 7800 printer for ink prints and Noritsu HD 3701 digital printer for photographic prints were used. Multispectral imagery (by tunable liquid crystal filters system CRI Nuance Vis 07) data analysis show that in case of ink prints, the measured pixel colour coordinate dispersion (in the CIExy colour diagram) of similar colour arrays is smaller than in case of photographic printing. The print quality in terms of colour coordinate dispersion for printing methods used is much higher than in case of commercially available colour vision deficiency tests.

Porous χ‐Al2O3 Flake Powder as Dye‐Fixing Materials for Inkjet Printing Paper

Cationic additives are generally used in coated inkjet printing paper to improve water fastness. This study develops a coating for photographic inkjet printing paper that achieves good water fastness without cationic additives. Porous χ‐ Al 2 O 3 flake powder, which has high porosity, high specific surface area, and positive surface charges, is used as a pigment in the coating. The water fastness of prints is evaluated using an immersion method combined with the measurement of light absorbance of the water used for immersion. The results indicate that water fastness can be improved by introducing χ‐ Al 2 O 3 powder into the coating pigments. The intrinsic crevices and pores of χ‐ Al 2 O 3 provide concave sites for dye colorants and enhance the sorbtion of liquid phase of inks, but stick the dye colorants on the pigment surface. Furthermore, the positive surface charge of χ‐ Al 2 O 3 provides cationic sites for the fixation of dye on the coating surface via electrostatic interactions.

Ten Simple Rules for Starting a Company

Many faculty, staff, and students at academic institutions think about starting companies at some point in their careers. As academic funding models change, and how academia views entrepreneurial activity changes, starting companies is likely to happen more frequently. Hence, it is worth considering Ten Simple Rules to contemplate when starting a company while in academia. There is a wealth of general information out there to help you, but that information is not aimed specifically towards computational biologists. What follows is a hybrid that is intended as a general quick review for anyone, intermingled with some specific advice for computational biologists. By way of experience, we should say we have been involved in starting several companies: both in the biomedical sciences, dealing with biological software, computational biology services, and currently SciVee Inc. (http://www.scivee.tv) distributing scientific rich media, and outside it, ranging from the distribution of independent films, to a socially oriented dining club aimed at supporting local businesses, to a business supplying art quality photographic prints. None have been a great financial success, but all have been immense fun, an opportunity to meet interesting people, and an opportunity to think quite differently than when doing scientific research. Read that as a personal endorsement to go for it, even if starting a company is not yet a well-formed idea, and even though, as you will see below, the rules themselves might be cautionary and off-putting.

Indonesia. Refracted visions: Popular photography and national modernity in Java. By Karen Strassler. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. xxi + 375. Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Refracted visions: Popular photography and national modernity in Java By KAREN STRASSLER Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. xxi + 375. Plates, Notes, Bibliography, Index. The riches of photography for Indonesia's social history have been well explored for the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1940s. Other studies have examined commemorative albums, picture postcards, and the documentation of individuals, ethnic groups, antiquities, cities, railways, factories, plantations and mines. In Refracted visions, Karen Strassler takes the study of society and its peoples via the camera into the era of independent Indonesia. The focus of interest is new, and so is the author's approach. Strassler is, herself, a photographer. During two years of fieldwork in Yogyakarta (1998-2000), she joins a photography club, going on day trips with members 'hunting' for the picturesque; she reads photography magazines; visits photographic studios and print and photocopying shops; she talks to Indonesian photographers; and looks at friends' albums. In every home she records what Indonesians have pinned to their walls or framed. She is in the text, recording snatches of conversations, often giving an informant's particular choice of words in Indonesian to convey the nuance and the moment. Woven around all this are reflections on the modern Indonesian nation, the relationship of individual to the state, and how visual records reflect, perpetuate or subvert official discourse. Thanks to a subvention from the Getty Foundation, the book is lavishly illustrated, so readers can see for themselves the photographs so thoughtfully analysed. Camera technology has made dramatic advances since Woodbury and Page set up the first photography studio in Batavia in 1857. Strassler argues that Suharto's authoritarian state generated a culture of documentation. She studies several genres of photographs: studio portraits; amateur snaps; identity photographs; rituals of family life; and student photographs of political demonstrations. The final chapter presents a detailed study of an army veteran who uses photographs to prove that a divine light had entered him to verify his special status as agent for the late President Sukarno, and to fulfil his mission of moving history towards the time when Sukarno would re-emerge as leader of Indonesia and, indeed, of the world. The early part of the book looks at the late colonial era amateur photographers and the subjects they chose. Strassler notes that, since Dutch times, Indonesians of Chinese descent have dominated photography. She reproduces photographs from their albums, suggesting the rich vein for study in Indonesian albums from this period. …

The Transition from Silver Halide to Digital Printing and Its Effect on Print Quality

Printing technology is changing from traditional silver halide based photographic printing to alternative digital printing methods. As this change takes place, image quality differences alter the appearance of the photographic print in subtle but definite ways. These differences are particularly noticeable when migrating from continuous tone printing to electrophotographic systems that require halftone technologies to simulate the continuous tone. Creative Memories has changed the technology for producing its standard digital scrapbook page from traditional photographic printing to electrophotography. This presentation highlights image quality and other differences between the two systems, as well as customer responses to the change.

On the Extensometer Whose Magnifier is a Zollner Suspension Type Tiltmeter, and the Observation of the Earth's Strains by Means of the Instruments

In order to observe the ground-strain due to the tidegenerating force of the earth, it is necessary to record measurable the linearstrains, which are as large as 10-10. For that purpose, it should not onlymake longer the base line on the ground, but also magnify the relative displacementof the both edge-points of the base line extremely. A new typeof highly sensitive extensometer of which magnifier is a Zollner suspensiontype tiltmeter is devised. In the mechanism of the extensometer, a superinvarrod whose the length is constant, is put parallel with the base line, andan edge of the rod is fixed 011 one edge of the line so that the relative displacementof the unfixed edge of the rod and the other edge of the line maybe transformed into the inclination of the support of the Zollner pendulum.Consequently, the pendulum of the tiltmeter rotates magniloquently. Andalso the rotational angle of the pendulum is enlarged and recorded withan optical lever oil a photographic printing paper. The extensometer hasa sensitivity in the order that is higher than the formerly used one, andthe sensitivity is able to be perfectly controlled at will. As the sensitivityto the linear strain is more than 100 times as large as that of the extensometeras to the ground-tilting, the influence of the tilting may be neglected.The linear strains of the earth's surface in earth tide are observedwith this extensometer at Osakayama Observatory, and are obtained theanalyzed values that are subtracted the influence of the ground-tilting,in four directions N-S, E-W, S 38 W and S 52° E. Then, theearth-tidal constants Ii — 3 I, Ii and I are obtained as 0.440, 0.599 and0.053 respectively. And also the records (of the ground-strain) which areobserved with new type extensometer are compared with them which areobserved with other types'. In these records, the interesting phenomenawhich are generated within a short hour, are found.

'Diasec' and Other Finishing Techniques - Investigation of Accelerated Light Fading

A study of the accelerated light fading behavior of face-mounted color photographic materials has shown that alterations on the surface of the materials influence their fading characteristics. With the help of spectral density measurements it became apparent that the application of materials such as silicone rubber, adhesive film and acrylic sheeting, but also laminating films, onto the surface of the prints accelerated the degradation of the colorants, especially the yellow dye, in chromogenic materials. In the case of silver dye bleach materials, however, the opposite effect was observed. The influence of the material combination on the stability of face mounted color photographic prints was demonstrated to vary considerably. In order to better assess the inherent damage potential of the materials themselves, these were examined by means of instrumental analysis and measurements of pollutant gasses. Besides off-gassing compounds such as acetic acid and changes in pH caused by aging of the adhesive, face-mounting with a rigid plastic sheet (acrylic glazing) also affected the respective fading behavior of the various materials that were tested.

The past and the future of chromogenic colour photographs: lifetime modelling using near-infrared spectroscopy & enhancement using hypoxia

Chromogenic colour prints are amongst the most unstable materials found in heritage collections as the information-carrying dyes fade appreciably even in the dark. However, image stability is just one of the numerous properties that photographic companies aspire for in their products, along with constant improvements in colour balance and image development. It is shown that these continuous changes can be exploited to model the date a print was developed, as well as dye stability. As a non-destructive analytical technique, near-infrared spectroscopy in conjunction with multivariate data analysis was used to derive models to predict the year of development of a photographic print (Root Mean Square Error of Cross-Validation, RMSECV = 5.4 years) and dye stability (RMSECV = 1.4 ΔE T , i.e. normalised annual colour change). To examine the possibility to extend the lifetime of the valuable objects during storage, the use of oxygen-depleted environments (hypoxia) was also investigated. The results obtained show that hypoxia should not be used as a blanket approach for all chromogenic prints, as some degraded faster in hypoxic conditions than the control samples degraded in air. However, for most samples hypoxic storage turned out to be beneficial.

The desert and the sea: The Sapphic sublime of Frederick Sommer

This article considers tropes of fragmentation and immersion in photographs made by Frederick Sommer (1905–1999) in the 1940s. It problematizes Kant-derived conceptions of the sublime, arguing that the radical nature of Sommer’s work of this period challenges dyadic relationships of the figure/ground that are associated with depictions of the Kantian sublime. Reviewing some of the writing on Sommer’s work to date, the article draws upon a close reading of his photographic prints and technique in the context of his wider practice, and alongside work done over the past four decades in Literature Studies, Feminist Studies, Lesbian and Gay Studies, and Classical Studies, to propose that a model of the Sapphic sublime is appropriate to Sommer’s work of this period.