Effect of Optical Brightening Agents and UV Protective Coating on Print Stability of Fine Art Substrates for Ink Jet

Non-impact printing is gaining wider acceptance in the printing world, with one of the rapid growing applications being fine art color printing technology. With the right amount of artist’s imagination and combination of the right substrate and ink, it is possible to create a piece of art work that will last for a long time. This study includes a comprehensive look into ink/substrate combinations. The choice of proper substrate and coating, ink jet inks, together with some form of protection for ink jet printouts, is discussed here. Substrates with special ink jet receptive layers, with and without optical brightening agents (OBAs), were chosen for this work. The correlation between substrate’s characteristics and final print performance was established. Ink stability of prints with time was observed and lightfastness tests were performed in order to evaluate the stability of printed color patches on specific substrates. A special UV coating was applied to study its protection level. Results of accelerated lightfastness tests for the different substrates are interpreted in terms of change of color gamut volumes and ∆E