So you snapped a number of pictures at your daughter’s wedding. What if you could preserve them using photo lamination?
It’s the happy couple’s fifth wedding anniversary celebration. You decide to bring them out of storage and present them with the photos as a surprise. Sadly, you are the one being surprised , as the photos have discolored. You place them back in their resting place and run to the mall desperate for a last minute gift.
The diverse nature of the inks and the technology being used to print photographs has made them one of the most difficult art forms to protect from the rigors of time, light, humidity and other hazards these precious, and sometimes valuable, memories face.
The protection of photographs from everyday threats, such as coffee spills, dirt, water, fingerprints and normal wear and tear, is not a new or novel concept. The laminating solution has suffered as a viable solution to the problem of how to protect a photograph due to the inevitable problem of discoloration of the photo over time.
While laminating pouches for use with photographs have been available for some time now – effortlessly used with any number of readily available laminating machines – photo lamination has not exactly been a strong suit of these modern-day home and office necessities.
These traditional laminating pouches have suffered from one major shortcoming in the protection of photography, that weakness being the nature of the chemicals used in the laminating material itself. This leads to the discoloration of the photograph over time due to the incompatibility of the chemicals in the lamination material with the inks used in the printing of the photograph.
The upshot of all this is simply this – while the photo itself may stay clean and in one piece, it will eventually end up discoloring. It will happen – that is a fact of life – no solution has been available.
Until now, that is.
The problematic issue of discoloration has been addressed by the introduction of innovative laminating pouches, specially composed of material that has been designed and sized for exclusive use with photographs.
That’s the good news for photographers – amateur or professional; the even better news is that these photo lamination pouches work in conjunction with existing laminating machines meaning – no new equipment is required. The pouches themselves come in varying thickness, depending on your requirements, and sizes designed to fit most standard photograph sizes.
They are totally compatible with the inks used in printing photographs resulting in no harm to the photo and can be used with prints from inkjet or laser printers as well as photo printers.