Digital Photo Myth #2:
Your Photos Will Fade

Sometimes you will hear people say not to get digital photos because the prints will eventually fade away, leaving you with blank pieces of photo paper. This is not true.

If you have professionally printed digital photos from a digital photographer, those photos are printed using the exact same chemicals, etc. that non-digital photos are. So they are no more likely to fade away to nothingness than properly fixed non-digital photos are. To my knowledge the only reasons a professionally printed photo would fade (regardless of the method used to shoot the photo) are if it's been left out in the sun for an extremely long time or if it was never put in fixer. (Way back when, proofs were not fixed, and so those would fade away over time.)

This myth of digital photos fading over time probably got started because of people printing out photos on their home printers. A professional photographer will not be using a home printer -- in fact they won't be using a printer at all. Instead, they will have the photos printed using the standard chemical-based printing process at a photo lab.

© 2004-2008 Jacqueline L. Beck. All rights reserved.