Are professional prints worth their cost? A science experiment.

When I was first starting out as a professional photographer, the sheer number of professional photo labs and products was overwhelming. Initially, I didn’t even offer print products while I tested out different labs and their many different product options. And time and time again, as I was trying to decide on which products to offer/recommend to clients, I couldn’t get an answer to my most basic question:

What’s the best photo paper money can buy?

In my mind, this translates directly to: which photo paper will stand the test of time? Which will last the longest? (I look through the faded, orange photos of my childhood and wonder, “had my parents invested in professional photos, would the photos have lasted longer?”)

Whenever I called and personally asked a lab, they gave me a pretty standard reply. Basically, they told me the photos are archival quality and would last anywhere from 100-200 years, depending on storage conditions. That wasn’t cutting it for me. I mean, for one, some were developed on actual photo paper while others were printed on paper (fine art paper, but still). Surely there must be a difference in quality between the two, no?? My inner scientist surfaced, annoyed, curious, and ready to get some real answers (do you know I am certified to teach Chemistry and spent almost a decade teaching science?!).

I decided to take matters into my own hands and designed a controlled experiment. I ordered a bunch of photos from the same digital file. Seven sets were printed at two of my favorite professional labs, the other seven sets were printed at three different consumer labs (chosen based on an informal FB survey asking my friends which photo lab they prefer and a list of the top rated consumer labs from a Consumer Reports article).

I subsequently proceeded to put half of the pictures through hell. As you can see in the photo above, I hung one set in a window on the side of our house that receives direct sunlight for the second half of the day (it’s brutal). I put them up on May 10, 2019, only taking them down briefly after about a month to mount them on cardboard and place a thin black strip of card stock across the center of the photos (to make it easier to see any potential fading). The second set, the one that I’m holding, was stored in as close to ideal conditions as possible inside my home. Over a year later, on June 23, 2020, I finally took them down to compare.

But first… the original file I sent to the labs for printing:

And, of course, each of the prints, prior to being subjected to their torture. I was pleasantly surprised with the print quality from all the labs (listed in the caption below). Sometimes you can get some pretty wonky-looking photos from consumer-grade labs, but aside from minor white balance issues, I was happy with the print quality. Here they are the day before I hung them up:

Oh, my hypothesis — all good scientists have a hypothesis, right? Not surprisingly, I was banking on the fact that there would be a noticeable difference in quality between the professional and consumer-grade labs, with the professional photo labs producing prints that would last longer with less fading and discoloration. Amongst the professional-grade prints, I thought the actual photo paper would fare better than the fine art prints which are not chemically developed, but simply printed onto paper (made of 100% cotton).

Now for the results… drumroll please!

Above, you can see the photos after their year of torture, now mounted on cardboard and with the strip of card stock down the center. Below, you can see the results with the card stock removed and the labeled backside of the photos that were stored inside next to their respective counterpart.

It looks as though my hypothesis was incorrect. The fine art prints came out the clear winners here with almost imperceptible fading and no discoloration. They looked as good at the end of the experiment as they did on day one. They were the only ones. The prints on photo paper pretty much looked terrible regardless of which lab they came from. Professional and consumer-grade prints both suffered from extreme fading and/or discoloration. The only area in which the professional prints came out ahead was in regards to cracking/peeling. Five of the seven consumer-grade prints suffered from extensive cracking and peeling, whereas only one of the seven professional prints did.

Along with the numerous print comparisons detailed above, I just so happened to have two identical samples I no longer used, one was Miller’s Signature Album (printed on deep matte paper) and the other was their Signature Book (with pearl press paper). I cut the same page out of each. Here they are before I dismembered them with the album on top and the book on the bottom.

They were subjected to the exact same treatment as the prints. A year later…

As with the fine art prints, the book, which uses archival-quality, pigment-based inks to print directly on the paper fared SUBSTANTIALLY better than the deep matte photo paper from the album. The deep matte print from the album seemed to suffer an even worse fate than the the deep matte print from my main experiment. This could be that it was printed at a different lab, but my hunch is that it has something to do with the adhesive used to affix the print to the album. If you look at the detail shot below, you can see that the print from the album was all pockmarked and peeling up in several spots, unlike the free-standing deep matte paper from my main experiment.

Conclusions and final thoughts

I finally have the answer I’ve been looking for! Granted, what I put those photos through in one year was likely equivalent to more than 100, possibly even 200, years of normal in-home exposure of displayed prints. But that’s what I wanted, to see which paper could best handle some hardcore abuse. And the results lead me to unequivocally conclude that, at least in regards to UV damage, fine art paper is far superior to more traditional photo paper. In both my experiments, the photos that were printed onto paper, instead of chemically developed, looked just as good as day one after more than a year of intense UV exposure. Please note — this does not mean that printing your own photos from a printer at home will be comparable — professional photo labs use archival-quality, pigment-based inks that stand the test of time. I know from experience that printing photos at home leads to photos that fade and or smear incredibly easily/quickly.

I can now confidently recommend to my clients that for their most prized photos, especially ones they plan to display in their home where they’ll be exposed day in and day out, they should, without a doubt in my mind, print them on fine art paper to best withstand the test of time.

Isn’t science great?! xo, Anna

#youreverydayisworthit