<x-charset iso-8859-1>I am afraid that I think you have based your comments on a relatively narrow viewpoint and experience. 1. I do not think that anyone is really saying that "digital storage media will fall apart sooner than paper, and you won't be able to recover it later on." If they are saying thing it might be that digital media is as fragile and open to degradation as anything else and that given the relatively quick changing technologies today and the relatively quick and complete obsolescence of hardware there may not be hardware around as some future date prior to any migration of the files to newer media which can read the data on the older media. For example, I know of few SyQuest drives that are around today that can read the SyQuest media of the past and they are disappearing fast. What you say about migration to newer media and storage formats and technologies is true in principle and ideally; but it is not practical in all instances or for all users. Some users (a) cannot afford the costs of either keeping up with technology on a timely manner (since they may be poor individuals and not either middle class professionals, employees of large established institutions and corporations, or large institutions and corporations themselves), (b) do not have the time, resources, or capacity to be constantly upgrading and migrating their old files to newer technologies as a large corporation or institution might especially if they have accumulated a significant number of files, or (c) have the bad luck to buy into the hardware or media upgrade cycle towards its end rather than at the beginning of it and cannot afford the money or time to make the change for the time being until a later date ( a couple of years later) if at all so as to effectively result in their not going back and retrieving old files for migration when they do get the newer hardware and storage media or do make the attempt but much later when the older hardware is no longer accessible or functional. 2. The workflows you speak about are for large commercial and institutional enterprises (or well known, famous, and highly successful individual artists who are into mass marketing cheaper reproductions of their original artworks) and not for small businesses, artists, and artisans. They are not for the serious part-time amateur or professional image maker who sells their work to private individuals via small local venues at low to moderate prices. Moreover, many of those image makers are not merely business people out to use are to make profit but persons who make prints that they want to be of high quality and something to be proud of which involves having their hands in the total process from creating the image through its reproduction and printing. Even those who use traditional photo labs to make their prints are inclined to either use customer labs to whom they are always in communications with concerning the supplying of explicit directions and instructions on how to print the image or who cannot afford the costs of traditional custom photo labs and outside printers which is why they have turned to inkjet printing in the first place so they can put out customized work at an affordable cost to themselves ( even if in actuality this has not been the case and the costs have been hidden but more expensive than they thought). 3. What you say about the stock photography market when you say, "The two above already prove how a digital storage and workflow works in real-life - i.e.. the stock photo market," may or may not be true; but we are not talking only about the stock fine arts or photography market or even the commercial ( use once for purposes of reproduction and throw it away) market of commercial advertising, marketing, public relations, or publishing. We are talking about artists, photographers, and image makers who sell limited quantities of prints (not rights to reproduce) of any particular image to individuals who intend to display those images on their walls in their homes, offices, or places of work, to give them as moderately to long lasting gifts to friends and relatives, or otherwise keep as keepsakes and memorabilia. Others among the sellers may be selling portraits, wedding or special event, or historic keepsake photography to individuals who plan to keep the for a long time as wall, dresser, or desktop displays or as scrapbook and album heirlooms or memories of events, people, and objects that have some personal or family significance. In both cases longevity is an issue; the buyer does not have access to the original or duplicate files to reprint the purchased print or often the inclination to do so if they had such access at an additional cost to them having paid for the print once. Remember they bought a product ( the print of an image) not a license to reproduce the image (reproduction rights). The suppliers or sellers of those prints on the other hand who has sold those prints does not want to spend their future days reprinting old previously sold prints for free rather than producing and selling newer images in terms of time spent; nor do they want to incur the additional costs upon themselves of making the reprints to replace those which deteriorated or faded. They also do not want to bear the storage and retrieval costs of maintaining an open technologically up-to-date archive or library of older image files as contrasted to a closed archive which may not be readily available and accessible for retrieval for image files that will not be producing future revenues at least at a level to pay for the costs of maintaining that archive. I think it must be remembered that this list membership includes not only stock fine arts, photo and commercial artists but also full-time and part-time professional printers, professional portrait and commercial photographers of all varieties, as well as fine arts photographic craftspersons who may display and sell their work publicly from restaurant walls, storefront windows, or in arts and crafts fairs. It also includes the hobbyists who produce prints of their own images for their personal pleasure and to give away to friends and family. Their interests in longevity are not all the same and nor are their abilities or desires to maintain the most current up-to-date hardware and storage technologies. What you have used as a grounds for your points is a limited universe for which the statements may or may not be true; but its applicability to the boarder real world universe is questionable at the very least. -----Original Message----- From: owner-epson-inkjet@leben.com [mailto:owner-epson-inkjet@leben.com]On Behalf Of chiendh@uci.edu Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2000 1:05 AM To: epson-inkjet@leben.com Subject: Re: Our responsibilty with Inkjet Printing 1. The point isn't that digital storage media will fall apart sooner than paper, and you won't be able to recover it later on. As with anything 'important', you migrate it to newer media and storage formats -before- the deterioration and obsolecence occurs. Hopefully, with good luck and good backup practice, you should be able to move those files in a decade or so to newer media/format w/o any bit errors that cannot be corrected by the ECC and second/third copies of the original files. 2. Eventually, I can see a larger company like Getty, which bought up that poster printing company, taking care of the actual printing and distribution someday. After all, once we've gotten our workflows properly calibrated and so forth to their printers, we only need to select the desired printer, inks, output media, and so forth, and let them take care of the messy stuff. After all, isn't our goal to focus on the creation of beautiful images - not sitting by a printer for hours and hours for dozens of prints for our customers? 3. The two above already prove how a digital storage and workflow works in real-life - ie. the stock photo market. Now you certainly don't see them complaining how they should go back to analog for longevity and other reasons do you? Digital works when you understand the limitations and know how to work around them (limitations also exist in the analog realm). Instead, they've learned how to deal with the fragility of digital storage media and simply make more backups and migrate in a timely manner. I'm sure we'll still see the same great stock images appearing decades from now, perfect, intact, and the same as when we first saw them today. d =) - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions. </x-charset>