Now that I answered your question, please answer this one: Any news about Canon's Lucia Pro inks permanece?
Aardenburg has only 3 ink/media combinations printed on a Canon-1000 in test to date. I wish we could have started more media in test because these three samples show that media is now a very important consideration with respect to any published ratings for the Canon Pro-11 ink set, but funding didn't permit. The three Aardenburg test samples have reached 50 Megalux hours in test, but I have been reluctant to publish any results to date because definitive conclusions are still problematic at this point in time.
All three samples are still passing lower and upper Aardenburg Conservation Display ratings, but two of the three samples are very close to triggering the lower CDR limit while the third is doing much much better. This disparity between best media and worst media is sobering to say the least, and it very likely explains Canon's dillemma with any Wilhelm test results (if indeed Canon commissioned any such tests). As far as I can tell on WIR's difficult-to-navigate website, Canon paid WIR to test the older Lucia EX set with just two media. One was Canon's flagship RC photo paper at the time (Canon Heavyweight Satin Photo), but that paper has been discontinued, so an apples-to-apples comparison of Canon's Lucia EX versus Pro-11 on that paper would be of little practical value to customers today. Likewise, the older Lucia EX set has never been tested (either by WIR or Aardenburg) on the newer Canon Pro Luster paper. This is unfortunate because Canon's newer Pro Luster paper is on a path to turn in the lowest score of the three Lucia Pro-11 printed samples I have in test, and thus, if WIR were to publish results for Lucia Pro-11/Canon Pro luster, the only recent WIR rating to directly compare the result to would be Canon Lucia EX/HW Satin photo. In this situation, any step backwards in the rating is just as likely to be caused by the media chemistry rather than the ink chemistry. In other words, it's a confounded experiment, thus only useful from a marketing perspective if the new ink and newer RC photo paper matches or exceeds the older ink/media test result. However, my ongoing tests already show that the older Canon Lucia EX/Canon Heavyweight Satin combination is indeed going to end up with the superior lightfastness rating, but again, that doesn't mean the Lucia Pro-11 ink is necessarily worse, only that the newer Canon RC photo ink/media combination taken as a combined unit is worse. On the other hand, the best Lucia Pro-11 sample I have in test, i.e., Canon Pro-11 printed on Moab Entrada Rag Natural paper, is running in a "dead heat" so far in direct comparison to the Lucia EX/Entrada Rag Natural sample I also have it side-by-side on the same light fade test unit. Hence, it's unclear at this time if the newer inks are equal, better, or worse than Canon's older inks sets on a wider variety of media, although better seems increasingly unlikely. We sorely need a bigger sample size containing numerous popular papers printed with both older and newer Canon ink sets to determine a proper answer to this question. I seriously doubt Canon has commissioned such a study with WIR or anyone else. I'd like to be wrong on that, but given past history of commissioned industry testing and marketing claims, I doubt I will be wrong. It's not just Canon that falls short on the testing regimens. Neither Epson nor HP as well have ever been even close to up to date across their entire branded media lines printed with their major ink sets.
Hence, the Lucia Pro-11 ink set is still sort of a can of worms with respect to print longevity that only testing a larger sample size involving different main stream media is going to sort out in the longer run. Is it equal to, better, or worse than the older Lucia EX ink set? Very hard to say at this point in time. Is it in third place behind Epson's newest HD/HDX ink sets and HP's now decade old Vivera pigment set.... yes more than likely, but further testing is required. All that said, Is it good enough? Well, if TraderJay's "one generation" expectation is good enough for you, then you can indeed buy a Canon Pro1000, 2000, 4000, or 6000 printer model with reasonable expectation that your customers won't return faded prints to you any time soon. However, if you set the bar that low, then Canon's Chromalife 100+ dye base set also gets you there, as do conventional color chromogenic wet processed prints. That's why I asked the question: "what is your expectation for print longevity?"
cheers,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com