My understanding is that some photographers are archiving their digital pictures by basically printing them using the 4 color process, which gives them the 4 "n

My understanding is that some photographers are archiving their digital pictures by basically printing them using the 4 color process, which gives them the 4 "negatives" ("postives?" or whatever they're called) for each color (CMYK I guess). Those sheets are archival quality and should last for quite sometime, given a proper storage environment. They can always use those later to have them scanned back in should they lose their master digital files.