Yellowing of RC prints in office environment

[ooze]

Hi,

I'd given a few RC prints to colleagues in my office and they had put the loose prints up around their desks. Now I find that they all have started to fade and turn yellow in the highlights They are hardly a year old. In over 14 years of printing this is the first time I see this happen and wonder why. I have numerous RC prints - new and old - pinned up at various places at home and they all look fine, so I doubt it's my processing. The office is a typical IT/Engineering office with laptops, fluorescent lighting etc. Maybe in the evening the cleaners spray around with some chemicals; I don't know. Recently I've placed a loose FB print on my desk...just to see how that one fares. Any ideas or experiences?

Cheers.

[tj01]

Do you by any chance reuse the fixer ? I'm not sure of your workflow, but it could be insufficient fixing.

Regards
TJ

[Steve Smith]

If it's due to insufficient washing (rather than fixing) then the FB print is likely to do even worse.


Steve.

[Poisson Du Jour]

Ozone can be a culprit, from photocopiers, fax, air conditioning, computers etc. I have seen this before, plus redox, occurring in untreated (non-toned) RC prints.
An office environment is a poor place of choice for unframed prints. They should be selenium toned and hermetically sealed. Redox ruined my early B&W prints done in the late 1980s when they were simply pinned to the wall of the canteen adjoining the office where I worked at the time.

[RalphLambrecht]

could be ozone from narby aser printers. how close are the printers?. i tried to make this happen for a test of a sistan replacement, and it took 6months for the prints to showclear highlight- yellowingif prints were n the direct airflow of the printer, which is used all day.

[RalphLambrecht]

yes, selenium and or even light sulphide toning would have prevented this.untonedRCprintsare very sensitive to environmental attack.

[Ronald Moravec]

Insufficient wash or fix. We had some RC displayed in an entryway and only one print of the batch turned yellow. One day the single print was gone and returned less yellow, but soon reverted to the original yellow state. I assume the tried to repair it.

The were no obvious environmental issues and all the prints were exposed to the air.

[Simon R Galley]

Correctly fixed and washed prints in that enviroment would not degrade in 12 months:

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

[Poisson Du Jour]

Maybe the said cleaners stand around with smoke in mouth, musing over their busy work while puffing smoke onto your cherished artworks.
You never know...

[ooze]

Correctly fixed and washed prints in that enviroment would not degrade in 12 months:

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

I should add a few further notes. All my RC prints at home - many of which are several years old - pinned up on boards etc are all fine, and they are all treated the same way, that is as per Ilford recommendations. I use film strength Hypam (1+4), fix RC prints for 30 seconds and wash for at least 10 mins with several changes of water. I dump the fixer (1-1.5 liter) after at most two printing sessions, with hardly more than the equivalent of 15 24x30 prints through it...just to be one the safe side. From time to time I check the dissolved silver content with one of those Tetenal strips and have never been over accepted levels.