3 ms·

"re" think? Everything digital is far more ephemeral than their physical counterparts. Print your favorite photos in black and white on acid free paper if you

by rsl7 14y ago

"re" think? Everything digital is far more ephemeral than their physical counterparts. Print your favorite photos in black and white on acid free paper if you want them to endure.

phillmv 14y ago
I'm interested in collecting links and thoughts on this very issue. Do you need to use special ink on acid-free paper? Is it easy to buy acid-free paper? Have we figured out any good ways for long term just plain data preservation? (let's forget about preserving obsolete encoding formats, for the sake of argument) I have a number of videos of someone dear to me that I'll never be able to replicate, and I'm very interested in making it last slightly longer than my current harddrive/the lifespan of my amazon S3 backups. I have half a pg-style-essay on The Great Forgetting kicking around my harddrive. I have this pet theory that future archeologists will have a better conception of 1980s pop culture than what is about to unfold in the decades to come. Or even what's happening right now that large tracts of late 90s/early aughts digital culture is evaporating.
- rsl7 14y ago
  We are restoring some old family photos and movies - all the black and white photos are fine, but the color photos are fading. All the old cellulite film from the 30s and 40s is pretty much dead, it's just disintegrating. There is no long term preservation besides copying. All my digital video on tape from the early 2000s is dead. The early DVDs I burned in 2002-2004 are all dead (due to the organic dye, I guess). Many of the CDs I burned in the late 90s are dead. The most durable digital format I have has been the 5.25" disks, probably due to their ultra low density.
- RandallBrown 14y ago
  The library of congress is cataloging all of our tweets. We'll be just fine.
- gaius 14y ago
  "Special ink" ;-) There is no ink in traditional printing, no printer as you think of it either. There is silver and there is gelatin embedded in the paper, and you project the film onto it, then wash it in special chemicals to make the projected image permanent. You can get it done from digital easily enough these days however http://www.ilfordlab.com/ http://www.ilfordlab.com/
  - klodolph 14y ago
    It's far from a foolproof process. You have to be careful with choosing paper (RC vs FB is one choice, and RC is much better than it was in the 70's but I wouldn't consider it "archival", some FB paper may be acid free but still contains whitening chemicals which caused problems in the past) and the chemicals and washing process has to be done properly (it's easy to get contamination in the wash water, hypo in the final print will cause fading over time). Then you have to store it properly. If you frame it, you have to worry about the air in the frame -- there are stories of prints framed during building renovation that degraded since the frame trapped air containing chemicals from the construction. Tape is also a serious issue if you use tape (which is the best way to frame prints). "Permanent" is such a strong word. Sure, 100 years, if you get all of the above right. Getting well past 100 years is simply not within the range of simple silver gelatin prints; the silver will corrode due to the same process that causes silver jewelry to tarnish. True archival stability requires toning. You have three good options: sulfide, selenium, or gold. Sulfide (or "sepia") has a striking brown color which reminds you of old photographs. That's because only the old photographs which were toned survived -- the neutral colored black and white photographs faded long ago. Selenium has a more mellow black/brown color depending on the dilution, and can be made fairly neutral. It is generally preferred over sulfide. Gold, on the other hand, provides a slightly cooler tone (blue or green is possible, if you use enough of it) but it's expensive enough that the cost of the gold can be a significant fraction of the material cost. (Old gold-toned photos survive too, but they're rarer.) (Not all toners increase permanence, e.g., iron-based toners can give you a cheaper blue than using gold but they're water-soluble.) On the other hand, an inkjet can be loaded with carbon-based pigments. Carbon-based pigments can be found on cave paintings in France dating back 32,000 years, so they should be stable enough. I have no doubt that a good inkjet print with carbon-based inks will outlast all of my darkroom prints. In my mind, color inkjet prints have far surpassed color darkroom prints, but that's not as hard as it sounds.
est 14y ago
ok, that raises an interesting question: what is the most ink-economic printing encoding for digital data? For example, I want to print a PNG file, instead of printing out the picture, I want to preserve its original files hex codes, instead of printing some SVG curves, I would print its XML source instead. Instead of printing formulas, I would print the LaTex source code directly. This could be lossless data printing. What would be the most effeciant, ink-saving, and easy to recognize, and error-preventing serialization format for printing?
- ramchip 14y ago
  Something like a series of high-density QR code sounds like it could work. You'd get free error correction. But at this point I think I'd go for microfiche rather than paper. Edit: http://lwn.net/Articles/242735/ http://lwn.net/Articles/242735/
- ranit8 14y ago
  There is this (it seems the author doesnt take it seriously though): http://www.ollydbg.de/Paperbak/index.html http://www.ollydbg.de/Paperbak/index.html

by rsl7 14y ago

"re" think? Everything digital is far more ephemeral than their physical counterparts. Print your favorite photos in black and white on acid free paper if you want them to endure.

phillmv 14y ago

I'm interested in collecting links and thoughts on this very issue. Do you need to use special ink on acid-free paper? Is it easy to buy acid-free paper? Have we figured out any good ways for long term just plain data preservation? (let's forget about preserving obsolete encoding formats, for the sake of argument) I have a number of videos of someone dear to me that I'll never be able to replicate, and I'm very interested in making it last slightly longer than my current harddrive/the lifespan of my amazon S3 backups. I have half a pg-style-essay on The Great Forgetting kicking around my harddrive. I have this pet theory that future archeologists will have a better conception of 1980s pop culture than what is about to unfold in the decades to come. Or even what's happening right now that large tracts of late 90s/early aughts digital culture is evaporating.

rsl7 14y ago
We are restoring some old family photos and movies - all the black and white photos are fine, but the color photos are fading. All the old cellulite film from the 30s and 40s is pretty much dead, it's just disintegrating. There is no long term preservation besides copying. All my digital video on tape from the early 2000s is dead. The early DVDs I burned in 2002-2004 are all dead (due to the organic dye, I guess). Many of the CDs I burned in the late 90s are dead. The most durable digital format I have has been the 5.25" disks, probably due to their ultra low density.
RandallBrown 14y ago
The library of congress is cataloging all of our tweets. We'll be just fine.
gaius 14y ago
"Special ink" ;-) There is no ink in traditional printing, no printer as you think of it either. There is silver and there is gelatin embedded in the paper, and you project the film onto it, then wash it in special chemicals to make the projected image permanent. You can get it done from digital easily enough these days however http://www.ilfordlab.com/ http://www.ilfordlab.com/
- klodolph 14y ago
  It's far from a foolproof process. You have to be careful with choosing paper (RC vs FB is one choice, and RC is much better than it was in the 70's but I wouldn't consider it "archival", some FB paper may be acid free but still contains whitening chemicals which caused problems in the past) and the chemicals and washing process has to be done properly (it's easy to get contamination in the wash water, hypo in the final print will cause fading over time). Then you have to store it properly. If you frame it, you have to worry about the air in the frame -- there are stories of prints framed during building renovation that degraded since the frame trapped air containing chemicals from the construction. Tape is also a serious issue if you use tape (which is the best way to frame prints). "Permanent" is such a strong word. Sure, 100 years, if you get all of the above right. Getting well past 100 years is simply not within the range of simple silver gelatin prints; the silver will corrode due to the same process that causes silver jewelry to tarnish. True archival stability requires toning. You have three good options: sulfide, selenium, or gold. Sulfide (or "sepia") has a striking brown color which reminds you of old photographs. That's because only the old photographs which were toned survived -- the neutral colored black and white photographs faded long ago. Selenium has a more mellow black/brown color depending on the dilution, and can be made fairly neutral. It is generally preferred over sulfide. Gold, on the other hand, provides a slightly cooler tone (blue or green is possible, if you use enough of it) but it's expensive enough that the cost of the gold can be a significant fraction of the material cost. (Old gold-toned photos survive too, but they're rarer.) (Not all toners increase permanence, e.g., iron-based toners can give you a cheaper blue than using gold but they're water-soluble.) On the other hand, an inkjet can be loaded with carbon-based pigments. Carbon-based pigments can be found on cave paintings in France dating back 32,000 years, so they should be stable enough. I have no doubt that a good inkjet print with carbon-based inks will outlast all of my darkroom prints. In my mind, color inkjet prints have far surpassed color darkroom prints, but that's not as hard as it sounds.

est 14y ago

ok, that raises an interesting question: what is the most ink-economic printing encoding for digital data? For example, I want to print a PNG file, instead of printing out the picture, I want to preserve its original files hex codes, instead of printing some SVG curves, I would print its XML source instead. Instead of printing formulas, I would print the LaTex source code directly. This could be lossless data printing. What would be the most effeciant, ink-saving, and easy to recognize, and error-preventing serialization format for printing?

ramchip 14y ago
Something like a series of high-density QR code sounds like it could work. You'd get free error correction. But at this point I think I'd go for microfiche rather than paper. Edit: http://lwn.net/Articles/242735/ http://lwn.net/Articles/242735/
ranit8 14y ago
There is this (it seems the author doesnt take it seriously though): http://www.ollydbg.de/Paperbak/index.html http://www.ollydbg.de/Paperbak/index.html