What Is Acid-Free—and Why Does It Matter?
You may have noticed photos and paper clippings kept in older style albums have yellowed. You should get your photos out of there quickly! Store them in a photo-safe box or album. Because we want our photos to last a lifetime (or many lifetimes) this is important. Acid causes paper and photos to disintegrate. Anything that is used on or near photos should be acid-free and lignin-free, including cardstock, paper, glue, markers, embellishments and stickers. If unsure about a product, keep well away from the photo on your scrapbooking page.
The Issue of Acid and Lignin
Not all scrapbooking products are photo safe. Some manufacturers cut corners to produce a cheaper product and will give you the impression that the product is acid-free because they are labelled as Scrapbooking products. Before you buy, look for labels such as Acid Free, Archival Quality, or Photo Safe. Products labelled as ”Safe for Card Making” are not necessarily ok for scrapbooking, as card making doesn’t have to be acid-free. If you browse through the Kaszazz catalogue, you’ll notice that acid free products are indicated by a colour coded price.
What’s Lignin?
Lignin is the natural bonding element which holds wood fibres together. Newsprint contains lignin—you’ll notice how brittle and yellowed a newspaper becomes after just a few days. Like acid, lignin can be removed during processing to make scrapbooking paper safe. If you want to include newspaper articles or announcements in your memory album, photocopy them onto acid-free, lignin-free paper or scan them into your computer and print out. Reflex copy paper or any sort of photo printing paper is fine to use.
Archival quality
This is a term used to indicate materials which have undergone laboratory analysis to determine their acidic and buffered content is within safe levels.
Photo safe
This is a term similar to archival quality but more specific to materials used with photographs.
Buffered paper/PH Factor
During manufacturing, a buffering agent such as calcium carbonate or magnesium bicarbonate can be added to paper to neutralize acid contaminants. Such papers have a pH of 8.5. The PH Factor refers to the acidity of a paper. The pH scale of 1-14 is the standard for measurement of acidity and alkalinity; pH neutral is 7. Acid-free products have a pH factor of 7 or above.
Sheet protectors
These are made of plastic to slip over a finished album page, They can be side loading or top loading and fit 5”x7”, 81/2”x11” or 12”x12” pages. It is important that they be acid-free – read the label on the packaging or album they come in.
Cropping
Never crop a Polaroid print and please don’t crop those one-of-a-kind heritage photos! Make a copy and then crop the copy. But save the original! I like to use my computer scanner for creating duplicates of heritage or one-of-a-kind photos; you can also use the software program to touch up photos that might be showing a bit of wear, or correct problems such as Red Eye.
