Ask HN: Print photograph to preserve it for 100 years? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Print photograph to preserve it for 100 years?

Hi folks, I know nothing about photography. I am recovering some old photo slides from my father, and I would like to print these in a way that would let me preserve the print for a long time. Reason? Some of these pictures have a strong personal/sentimental value and I would love the idea that I can pass these on to future generations within my family.

Any of you has experience with some type of printing that guarantees a long preservation? Not necessarily >100 years, but at least several decades? (I am in my 40s, and I seriously plan to stick around for the next 50 years or so).

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With the caveat that there are not any one hundred year old prints from modern printers...

Use pigment based inks on an acid free paper and store the prints using archival methods.

Less expensive inkjet printers tend to use dye based inks. They produce amazing prints and the prints can have a long life. But dyes often break down over time (this can be a problem with color prints produced photographically as well).

There are pigment based inkjet printers. They tend to be more expensive and a bit temperamental unless used all the time. Pushing tiny bits of pigment through inkjet nozzels is harder because there must also be a binder. Small hole, grit, and glue is not a recipe for success but the printers do it anyway.

Pigments tend not to break down over time and that's why we can still see cave paintings and other pictographs.

All that said, keep the originals.

Did I say keep the originals?

If not, keep the originals.

The only reason this question has come up is because the originals are still around.

Good luck.

Not an answer to your question, but maybe interesting:

A colleague of my father made some etched copper plate images from photos. I don't have his full process, but he photocopied the original photos a few times to get an image made from black and white regions. This he photocopied onto a transparency, which he then used to etch a copper plate using a circuit etching kind of workflow.

The final plate had smooth or matte copper areas corresponding to light and dark.

Quite striking and I guess it should last a long time.

The keyword to look for is "archival prints", but fair warning: it's a rabbit hole. And in the end often comes down to who you trust that they know what they are talking about and doing. And stable long-term storage is a large part of it.

E.g. some good inkjet inks are claimed to last 200 years, on good (acid-free) paper and stored well those should last quite a while.

Thanks for the tip!

“And stable long-term storage is a large part of it.”

Warning: one part of that is to store them in the dark. Light, especially UV with its higher energy per photon, isn’t good for preserving paper, plastics and paints (that’s most of the stuff typically used in prints)

So, if you want to look at those prints, you may be better of ensuring new prints can be made then ensuring a print lasts for a long time.

If you’re not worried about the collapse of society, digital storage might be a good option (AWS Glacier or similar, ideally multiple providers plus a personal copy)

(are there standards for printing the bits of a .jpg with some redundancy added, to allow recovery of the .jpg from such a print? If so, making such a ‘print’ on good paper as the backup medium, and storing that in the dark, plus a good print of the image in the .jpg for human viewing might be a good option)

Try searching something along the lines of 'museum quality' print. It's a vague pointer from my side but should help you.

Another great advice is to make a high quality scan. High resolution, full color. Output it to TIF file format. That should give you a file that you can print anywhere.

So you need to take care and archive the printed one _and_ the digital one.

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