An increasing number of prints produced by inkjet, dye sublimation and electrophotographic technologies are now being collected by museums, libraries and archives. While there has been considerable investigation on the image stability of these materials, there has been relatively little on their physical integrity. The research reported here is focused on their scratch sensitivity and a comparison to a previous study on their sensitivity to abrasion. The apparatus and methodology described in ISO 18922 was used to scratch prints produced by the wide variety of digital print technologies in use today. However, the evaluation technique described in the ISO document was found not to be useful for these materials. Image analysis equipment and software was found to be effective in quantifying scratch sensitivity and results from this analysis are presented. These provide data which show that the abrasion sensitivity of digital prints cannot be used to predict their sensitivity to scratches. Previous work showed that pigment prints were particularly sensitive to abrasion but other types were generally not. This investigation indicates that pigment prints as well as other types of digital prints are subject to scratch damage because of loss of image colorant.
Eugene Salesin, Daniel Burge, "The Scratch Sensitivity of Digital Reflection Prints" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP27), 2011, pp 197 - 200, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2011.27.1.art00050_1