Care of your Color, Limited-Edition Prints

Care for Color Limited Prints

By: William Tuttle, Photographer

Even if some conditions aren’t ideal, follow this advice and your color photographic reproduction should last for generations!

  1. Convert your print to a digital format and digitally printed to produce images of utmost detail, sharpness and color. Prints are signed and numbered by the photographer and are packaged with an archival mounting board, protective sleeve and identifying label.
  2. When framing the photograph, make sure the print does not come in contact with the glass. The photograph may stick to glass surface in time. Using mats or spacers eliminates this problem.
  3. Don’t display prints in direct sunlight. Fading will inevitably occur.
  4. Illuminate only with tungsten light whenever possible and keep the light at the lowest level consistent with viewing needs. Prints fade more quickly with florescent light.  (Update: LEDs produce no UV light which makes them the least harmful to art and fabrics.)
  5. The life of prints will be extended by displaying them in a low humidity environment. Dampness adversely affects prints.
  6. If you follow the above advice, even if some conditions aren’t ideal, your color photographic reproduction should last for generations!

Bill Tuttle has been photographing the landscape since 1984 when he began work for the book, “Four Seasons of Splendor in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”

He also photographed the Blue Ridge Parkway, Shenandoah National Park and the Carolinas until moving to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1992.

Since then he has been capturing the beauty of Colorado and the west with a Deardorff 4×5 Special view camera.