Epson Hot Press Bright and UV Glass

[tjphototx]

This past weekend I had an opening of a show of my work that I printed images 30"x40" and larger on Epson Hot Press Bright using Epson Inks and my Epson 9900 printer. I like the look and weight of the paper since my framer uses a method floating the prints behind non-uv plexiglass. One of the purchasers of my work lives in a modern high rise in Dallas,Texas that gets a lot of sunlight. It is my understanding the building has UV glass installed. Since it is my understanding that papers with OBA's such as the Epson Hot Press Bright shouldn't be mounted behind frames with UV glass or UV plexiglass should I print the images for this collector using paper with no OBA's? I understand quite a few responses may be "you shouldn't use paper with optical brighteners at all" but that really isn't my question. Thank you in advance for your help.

Thom Jackson

Here is a link to the images if you care to view them.
http://www.craigheadgreen.com/currentexhibitionslideshow/images1.htm

[bill t.]

You will lose a certain amount of the OBA/UV boost, but your images will still look OK, as they might look indoor with low UV tungsten lighting.  No UV glass is really 100% UV blocking, so there might be some OBA action still going on when there is fluorescent or daylight in the lighting mix.  And the after-market UV filters applied over non-UV window glass lose there UV blocking properties fairly quickly, I am told.

There are a few threads on this subject on thegrumble.com, including a few descriptions of "doh!" events.

You may benefit from evaluating your images under a piece of UV glass, tape up the edges for safe handling.

[Some Guy]

Hard to say on the OBA and if it will be an issue later on.  From what little I know about them, it seems they can cause some fading in time - but how long or soon is the question.

Can you spray the prints?  Might help.  I've sprayed some canvases (Super bright PremierArt canvas with OBA's, maybe brightness of 104 or more.  Sprayed front and back too.) with PremierArt's lacquer with an auto-finish spray gun and they seem to be holding up okay, but no sunlight hits them either - plus they were printed with dye ink so I would expect them to die off quicker too.  So far so good - knocking on wood.

SG

[bill t.]

The best surviving prints I have in the field are Sunset Select canvases coated with non-OBA varnish, and mounted on Gator.  They are effectively hermetically sealed on both sides.  Very little fading is visible after many years in a particular bright fluorescent environment where some matted-under-glass Premium Luster prints are embarrassingly faded.  The OBA-rich Sunset Select from that time is a somewhat different creature than we have today, but it is certainly interesting how resilient that stuff has been in the field with no particular protection except isolation from the air.

[Ernst Dinkla]

As most profiles are made with UV-cut spectrometers and with D50 conditions the OBA effect in the color fidelity is already cut like it will be in your display conditions. You could at least check the profile definitions. The Epson Hot Press Bright White has the best longevity of papers with OBA content according Aardenburg Imaging so that makes the choice less problematic.


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Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

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January 2014, 600+ inkjet media white spectral plots.