Color Fastness of Epson R300 Printed Discs

[Chip]

Instead of hijacking the R200 thread, I decided to post this little test here. I'm curious as to how well the color holds up on the Epson R300 printer. No special inks are being used. I grabbed a colorful background from the Pinnacle Studio collection and printed it on two discs. One disc I'll leave in bright Dallas, TX sun. The other I'll leave in a my scanner (remains dark). I'll take periodic scans of the two together. Here's the first reference scan. Now I'm off to place the "sun" one outside. I suppose if it rains I'll be testing water fastness too
2004.07.11 22:25

2004.07.12 22:49 End of day 1
Ironically, a bird crapped on the CD. I wiped it off which smeared the yellow slightly. Color isn't too bad yet. We reached a high of 95deg mostly sunny.

2004.07.16 09:30
We've had some 100deg days lately. I took the CD in at 9:30AM this morning and it was pretty warm to the touch, so this puppy is being baked. I can visibly see the orange starting to fade a bit. The rest of the colors seem to be holding up pretty well.

[lordsmurf]

The forecast calls for rain on Friday.

[The village idiot]

The forecast calls for rain on Friday.

Which will wash away the rest of the ink.

These printers are dye ink. Dye ink fades. End of story. Want lightfast, buy the R800 or 2100. Still not waterproof, but that is the disk's fault.

[Chip]

I think you meant to say "all inks fade". Sure pigment based is better than dye. Then again solvent ink is better than pigment. My test is to see how well a R300 CD does under the sun. LordSmurf said "it would be faded to nothing by the end of the day". I thought that seemed a bit extreme so I thought I'd see and let everyone know.

I would be more interesting to do this test with an R800 and a Mimaki solvent based print. The problem is I don't have an R800 and my Mimaki is made for 6foot wide prints.

I problably won't have to wait 5 days till Friday to check color fastness since it fades to nothing in one day. But then again, these weathermen are rarely accurate.

[hiptune]

Instead of hijacking the R200 thread, I decided to post this little test here. I'm curious as to how well the color holds up on the Epson R300 printer. No special inks are being used. I grabbed a colorful background from the Pinnacle Studio collection and printed it on two discs.

Thanks for sharing those, regardless of hot sunny fades (I always keep my discs in a case when they are not being played), the print looks fantastic.

Jeff

[Chip]

Since this disc obviously isn't going to fade in a day or two, I think I may increase the amout of times in between pics.

[Chip]

I've updated the original post with the latest scan. We're up to 6 days baking at near 100deg.

[lordsmurf]

It's a shame there's not any blue, green or purple in there. The darker colors go fastest. Ones that are more yellow tend to stay longer. When something has baked in the sun forever, it has that light blue, light yellow look to it. So testing shades or yellow won't be as affected.

[hiptune]

still looking fantastic!!!!

I'm out the door to buy this printer today, catch you later guys!!!!!

Jeff

[Chip]

On the disc in the far left you'll see blue. It's not a big swatch, but some. I think from this demo we can see it doesn't fade nearly as fast as anyone thought. The pigment based inks of the Epson R800 will probably last even longer. I actually thought this disc would be almost completely white after a month at 100deg direct sunlight. Subsequently, I figured I'd end up buying the R800 just to have the longer life.

I think I'll keep my R300 after this test and maybe just burn a new copy/print new label if the original fades. (Yes, I save all my labels)

I'll continue this test for awhile so stay tuned.

[Tiny71]

What discs are represented here? Wonder how silver would fair?

[hiptune]

What discs are represented here? Wonder how silver would fair?

I believe that has been mentioned already if you read this full thread.

[hiptune]

What discs are represented here? Wonder how silver would fair?

sorry, it is not this thread, it is another thread on epson printed CDs done on silver.

Basically, the silver discs blur and can get streaks, never looking as good as printable discs.

[Chip]

Sorry, I didn't post name brands. The "No Sun" one is a BeALL DVD white printable to the hub. The "Sun" one is a BeALL CD white printable to the hub. The inks are the standard Epson R300. There is no coating on either CD. After the bird pooped on the "Sun" CD, I did put it in a clear ziploc sandwich baggie. I figure this is a color fastness test and not a water proofing test (or bird dropping test).

[stiltman]

Well, at least it didn't completely wash out in one day.
I don't even think I've ever put a disk in direct sunlight for this long.

[ricky1756]

so, it isn't true that everything is bigger in Texas, or the whole disc would be covered

[hiptune]

Well, at least it didn't completely wash out in one day.
I don't even think I've ever put a disk in direct sunlight for this long.

You mean, it barely faded at all!!!!!! Come on don't be shy.

[lordsmurf]

I'd still insist on seeing a full color swatch with brown/green/blue/purple ... colors that fade faster than the red/yellow/orange (yellow-based) colors.

The test is good so far, shows the light inks are somewhat staying. But let's go all the way.

Putting it in direct sunlight is an accelerated time test. This will show what the ink will do after years and years (even in a case). it's not a perfect test, but it's the best we can do at home.

It'd be nice to see the actual discs. I know scanners can alter saturation. Chip, do the scans look 100% like the discs, or is there some mild variations?

[Chip]

The scanner is a pretty good one (Epson Perfection 1640SU). It's scanned in a color calibrated Corel 12 environment. I'd say the colors are pretty close. However what you're seeing may not reflect what I'm seeing because you're system isn't calibrated to mine. In a nutshell, I bet what you see on your monitor is close to the actual disc.

I might just end this test and start a new one using a Pantone color swatch with numbers embedded. That way you can see if my Pantone 286 blue is Pantone 286 blue on your screen.

[lordsmurf]

All the green shades in the orange and light orange balloon faded to nothing. All the dark reds faded into light reds.

[stiltman]

All the green shades in the orange and light orange balloon faded to nothing. All the dark reds faded into light reds.

Wow, I don't see that on my screen. I see a slight fading of all the colors. I mostly see it in the blue (upper left)

[The village idiot]

I would find it more interesting to see what the disk looks like after playing in a DVD player for XXX hours. Also same test in a blue laser machine.

[junkmalle]

A few years ago Epson had a problem with its light cyan inks fading very quickly. Obviously, anything that was light cyan would fade. Less obviously, people would turn orange as the light cyan component of flesh tones faded.

[Chip]

All the green shades in the orange and light orange balloon faded to nothing. All the dark reds faded into light reds.

I don't see that either, in the real disc or the scan or the online post. If you have access, grab a Pantone color swatch or some other known color calibration system.

At my store I have a Pantone calibrated HP5000ps. I print out all of the Pantones and from there I can use Corel's color calibration system to color match my screen, printers and scanner. Of course it'll never be exact since monitors emit colors and they're in RGB format, but you can get pretty close.

[lordsmurf]

My monitor is fine. It is calibrated.

Look:



^ Dark red turns to bright red. Dark turns light. Typical ink color loss.




^ All green/cyan is gone. Faded into oblivion. (And it's not from birdcrap, as the earlier images show it to still ahve some cyan.)

It's not hard to miss.

The sun accelerates this process, but natural ink fading will give you this in just a few shorts years. Better inks may take a decade, but I really doubt a cheap CD/DVD inkjet uses good inks. Not official cartridges anyway.

If you've ever been camping/hiking, you'll often find old Dr Pepper cans (which started purple/maroon and silver) having a light yellow color. Any can actually, or any paper, etc. Yellow is the last color to fade, so any test based off of yellow (including oranges) is just not going to work real well. Just go look in a video store that had video in a window display for too long. Only thing left is light light yellow, maybe a few light cyans. All other color are stripped. Darks go first.




^ Some significant loss of green here too. Totally gone in some areas, only yellow/orange remains.


You can also see hints of where the red is turning to orange, or will turn to orange eventually. After orange is yellow, where it will pretty much stay.

[stiltman]

This looks like it still has green

[lordsmurf]

This looks like it still has green

Like maybe 1/3rd of the original. Only the most intense green is left. Anything light green disappeared into orange.

[stiltman]

All the green shades in the orange and light orange balloon faded to nothing.

Like I said, I don't see this on my monitor. My pict still shows green.
Like I said it looks faded.
IMO, no colors have been faded to nothing

[Hawseman]

My monitor is fine. It is calibrated.

Look:



^ All green/cyan is gone. Faded into oblivion. (And it's not from birdcrap, as the earlier images show it to still ahve some cyan.)

Got to disagree with you here, LS. You can see the yellow running into the blue from getting crapped on....We know how dye-based inks fair in water (or runny turds).

I actually did a runny-crap experiment of my own once....I think it was a dvd backup of "Message in a Bottle".

[The village idiot]

OK, let's see... where do we start.

These are NOT the exact same disk. One is a Beall (no sun) the other is something else. There are differences in the colors between the disks before they were put out into the sun! All of you are arguing over bullshit! If you can't see the differences on your monitor (yeah mine's calibrated too, it may have been done with a shitty spyder, but obviously better than other peoples') put the original picture in photo shop, turn the grid on, and measure the same parts of each with the damn eye dropper!

You want to test this garbage the correct way?

Here you go:

Print some color blocks or better yet stripes, a series of different colors that go from top to bottom and cover the entire disk, make sure one of them is white, and one of them is black! Now cut the disk in half across all the stripes. Try to make a clean edge as this will help when comparing the halves to each other. Now put it on your scanner. Set the exposure so that the white stripe is at some specific point lower than the maximum output, and the black some specific point above the lowest output. Say 245 for white and 10 for black. Scan. Better would be to use a spectrophotometer and measure the stripes on both halves!

Now you are ready for the lights! Go out and buy a plant grow light (for the UV), and a daylight florescent light (better would be a daylight incandescent but they have a lifespan of about 24 hours). Turn them both on, and put one half of the disk in the light. Lights should be about 12 inches away from the disk half. Now put the other half of the disk inside a cardboard envelope, and put it in a desk drawer.

Wait.

Measure again remember to set the scanner levels for the dark storage disk, or use the spectro again.

Put back in dark and light (make sure the correct halves go back to the proper place.

Wait.

rinse and repeat

The reason I responded the way I did in my first post was because the first thing I noticed was the different disks. You started with so many errors there is no real way to know what really happened. Did the coating change? Did the ink change? Did both change? Did the disk get crapped on by a bird? Did it rain and wash the ink away? Humidity change? Temperature? Abrasion by wind borne dust? Did the scanner scan the same way as last time?

At this point the only thing that you can really tell is that a bird crapped on the disk. Not something that is going to happen to a large number of peoples' disks.

Now you have a test. If you are going to do it, then do it right. Have this thread locked so it will sink to the bottom, and start again with a new one.