Black and White turned yellow....

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Scott
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and last one for the evening....

I had a number of mounted giclee prints done by my go to Pro Lab about 6 months ago on smooth art silk fine art paper, which is a nice crisp white. This was my first real attempt at selling my work, I thought they looked fantastic, and I put them up for sale in a local gift shop. I sold a couple, but I think I was possibly selling an incomplete product (really should have got them framed in hindsight rather than just mounted). I went to pick up one of the prints to look into framing. It was a bit dark and dingy in the shop of the miserable day I went in, and put the fact the print looked a bit yellow down to the bad lighting, however when I got it home, the print (but not the mount) had gone sepia / yellow. I had an identical print (A reject due to a crease in the paper) that was done at the same time, which was still fine and really highlighted the issue with the one that was in the shop. I picked up the other remaining prints from the shop, and all had yellowed (yet again the mounts remained bright white).

I reported it to the lab, who are kindly reprinting for me (and I'm adding frames this time), but nobody has been able to answer the question as to how this might have happened, whether it might happen again, or how to stop it. Cos I'd hate this to happen to a customer who's bought one of the prints, and again it knocks the confidence I should have in my own products!

Anyone come across this before?
 
Did you bag the mounted prints in clear cellophane bags to protect them whilst on sale?

Did the shop "look after" them ~ keeping them out of bright sunlight and away from chemical odours?

NB not specifically prints but I recall a story where material (of some sort) was being damaged compared to a reference sample held elsewhere and the only difference was that the cleaner was wiping everything down with a cloth sprayed with a chemical cleaning agent i.e. instead of simply dusting everything ended up with a chemical wipe!
 
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They were in cellophane, but not bags, just wrapped (1/10 for presentation - must try harder, but yes)

I *thought* so - definitely not in sunlight, though the shop did occasionally sell fragrance diffusers. Nothing should have been near the prints themselves though? But that's an interesting point.... also nothing was dusty, so what cleaning has been done? I'd wondered why the mounts hadn't changed colour, but they wouldn't be reactive would they, and the paper probably would be?
 
on smooth art silk fine art paper, which is a nice crisp white.

This strikes me as odd. That "bluey whiteness" that I remember from old Persil ads are likely OBAs (optical brightening agents) that some paper manunfacturers add to their paper. The downside to OBAs on paper is a yellowing (actually a reduction of blue) over time. What paper was it printed on specifically (manufacturer)? Can you look on the internet to discover whether this paper has OBAs added? Lots of photo labs offer "fine art prints" but don't actually detail what paper they are using which is always an eyebrow raiser for me. I've got a lot of test prints on different papers and i can quite easily see the papers that have had OBAs added just by the whiter-than-white look. In my box of test prints, they're starting to yellow already - compared to non-OBA papers which are still as white as they were 2 years ago... Consequently, I avoid any OBA infused papers for anything other than contact sheets.

Might not be this - but I'd check the paper source. Getting them reprinted on the same paper will just give you the same problems in 6 months time.

Edit to add further reading links: http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/optical-brighteners-obas/
 
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I thought they were all Hahnemuhle papers but the smooth art silk isn't - doesn't show a manufacturer. Does say they're all archival grade, acid free and PH neutral, nothing about OBAs. Even if they did have OBAs, would you expect a significant difference in 6 months?
 
doesn't show a manufacturer

In my experience - printers who don't state what paper they're using are using something cheap (If I was printing on Hahnemuhle, Canson, or other reputable paper manufacturer I'd be telling people!). I'm not saying this is definitely the cause, but I'm untrustworthy enough to not go anywhere near a printer that won't state what they use. Looking at your response to Box Brownie, I'd be thinking that a combination of poor paper and poor storage could easily cause this.

I'm just the one voice though :)
 
FWIW

I have prints using Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl both on my home wall and in storage from 2014 and they are as good as the day I got them from the printers. They were all mounted and some in frames

I used commercially cut & supplied mounts using archival grade mountboard for both the mount itself and the backing board, the mounted (i.e. unframed) ones are in cellophane bags (or wrap for the one particular larger one) .

So a crossover point to note with your other thread about canvas prices ~ IMO buy cheap = buy twice................especially when they are being offered for sale ;)

PS In regard to OBA's ~ I think you will only find reference to their absence on the manufacturers website technical spec documents.
 
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