Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: Ken Brayton on August 03, 2014, 11:22:47 pm
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I have moved to the Philippines and am seeing mold on my prints. I have also noticed warping with the mats. The prints were made with Epson ultracrome inks on a 2400 printer using the Luster paper. Not being able to diplay the prints in an ideal enviroment I am hoping that others who also have encounted such conditions might have some suggestions on how to make the best of it? Thanks for any advise Ken
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Simple solution: air conditioning. If you cannot lower the heat and humidity you will continue to have the issues you describe.
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Simple solution: air conditioning....
That sounds like Marie Antoinette's advice ;)
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I'm not sure about electricity cost in the Philippines, but here in Hawaii we have the most expensive in the US, and most of the people I know deal with the climate in more traditional tropical ways. The percentage of people using AC is higher near the water, but it gets much less muggy rather quickly with elevation gain, making air conditioning less critical or even unnecessary for pleasant living conditions.. I"m at 1300 ft., which has fantastic temperatures year round, but we certainly get a lot of rain that does encourage mold. The thing I've found most critical is to maintain good airflow. Enclosed spaces are mold and mildew's friends, unless they are water vapor tight.
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Colorwave you are right about electric cost. Philippines has one of the highest electric cost. Sadly as much as I would like to keep everything cooler it is not an affordable solution. But airflow is something I can work to improve on. Thank you for the advise. Alan, coming from Portland Oregon more aircon would be my prefered solution. But alas there are always trade-offs. Ken
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Here in El Portal (Yosemite) we have hot dry summers. I also have problems with my Ilford Galerie Pearl paper curling, but more so with letter size. Leaving the air conditioning on all summer is not an option. I'm wondering if using a thinner paper would help? I also had problems with backing board warping. Luckily my archival mat board is fine.
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I have moved to the Philippines and am seeing mold on my prints. I have also noticed warping with the mats. The prints were made with Epson ultracrome inks on a 2400 printer using the Luster paper. Not being able to diplay the prints in an ideal enviroment I am hoping that others who also have encounted such conditions might have some suggestions on how to make the best of it? Thanks for any advise Ken
How are prints and mat mounted? Is the mat hinged to the backing board?
Brian A
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I mount using archival tape on top and photo corners. I hing the backing to the mat.
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What is the print mounted to? I mount everything on acid free foam board as I've found it more stable than mat board. If you are not using it, try and see if you get better results. I use 4 ply cotton museum board for the over mat with photo corners on paper up to 13x19. I've not observed any problems on prints hanging here in the Washington DC area but of course most places are air conditioned which as I noted before really helps.
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Hinge mounted on the acid free foam board with framers tape. The mat board is Crescent 2 ply. I have read that a thicker mat board would be less prone to warping. I have also read a bit about face mounting on acrylic, but not sure about how it would handle the heat and humidity. Ken
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Hinge mounted on the acid free foam board with framers tape. The mat board is Crescent 2 ply. I have read that a thicker mat board would be less prone to warping. I have also read a bit about face mounting on acrylic, but not sure about how it would handle the heat and humidity. Ken
Certainly 4 ply mat board would be better. Foam board 'should' be pretty stable under your conditions. How large is the white border around the prints? If you have a sufficiently large border that the mat can press down against that might help as well. Finally, are you framing these prints under glass/plexi? I don't see any issues with the prints hanging in my house here in suburban Washington DC. We keep the house somewhat warm in the summer to save on AC bill. I normally have a one inch border around all large prints that the over mat presses down on and don't see any image buckling under the plexi.
Acrylic mounting would certainly solve part of the problem as the base would not warp at all. The only issue would be the type of adhesive you use and whether there might be any chemical reaction that would affect the print and if so is this reaction accelerated by heat and humidity. I've not tried this process so I cannot comment but would be interested in what types of adhesive others have used (then I can put my chemist's thinking cap on and figure out the possible answer).