RE: Damaged prints - US Postal Service - Prevention

"Laurie Solomon" <laurie@advancenet.net> · Fri, 21 Jan 2000 20:57:39 -0600

Try sandwiching the printed piece between two plain white card stock cards
of the same size as the printed center just as one would do if one were
mailing an actual photographic print.  You also might check to make sure
that the ink on your printed piece has be completely absorbed by the paper
and completely dry so that it does not smear or come of upon being touched
or squeezed between your fingers.  Some inks and papers tend to never dry
completely and some inks tend not to be absorbed such that they will easily
flack off when used with certain papers.  It is worth a check.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-epson-inkjet@leben.com
[mailto:owner-epson-inkjet@leben.com]On Behalf Of Larry Gustafson
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2000 6:13 PM
To: epson-inkjet@leben.com
Subject: Damaged prints - US Postal Service - Prevention

This Christmas, delighting in the possibilities of my Epson 1200, I decided
to make my own Christmas cards.  I printed about 100 Christmas cards from a
drum-scanned 4x5 negative, using the Epson 1200 and Epson ink.  I printed
on Red River scored card stock (58 lb Denali Matte-Coated) using a standard
Epson quadtone curve.  The images were stunning.

A few weeks later  the postal service returned some of my cards because of
out-of-date addresses.  I opened the envelopes with the idea or sending the
cards back out to correct addresses and saw, to my surprise, that the
images were completely trashed.  They looked diseased with white blotches
all over the image.  It was like a white algae had formed on them.  At
first I thought the cards had gotten wet in the mail, but I had cards from
different parts of the country with the same problem.

On further investigation, it appeared that there was a pattern to the
blotches.  I looked at the outside of the envelopes and could see the same
pattern.  Where a dirty line had been formed on the outside of the
envelope, through some pressure roller in a postal machine, I could see the
same line formed by blotches on the image.  When I put the card back into
the envelope the marks on the envelope matched up with the blotches on the
image.  Apparently, the postal machine that cancels the stamp or puts the
little bar codes on the envelope applies so much pressure to the envelope
it rubs off parts of the image inside.

I'm going to do some experiments by mailing cards to myself to see if I can
stop this from happening in the future.  I would appreciate any comments or
suggestions.  Would a clear acrylic spray protect the image?  Would a sheet
of tissue paper over the image inside the envelope help?  Perhaps a card
insert between the image and the envelope?  I  appreciate any suggestions.
I'll let you know the results of my experiment.

Larry Gustafson
gustafsl@ix.netcom.com

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