Creating visual resources

Visual artefacts, photographs and large format originals

Content of this session

Visual artefactsTypes and characteristics of photographsMethods of captureMethods of providing accessSpecial handling

Visual artefacts

Huge category of visual materialspaintings and drawingsfabricsart objectstechnical drawingsmaps3-D objects

Croyland, Lincolnshire, John Sell Cotman

Bacchanal, Cecily Brown

Suffragette Banner, Women’s Library

A Cosy Couple, Amanda Francis

Technical drawing design

1930 map locating Painswick village inside folded printed change of address flier for Pyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher

Spellman Music Covers Collection, Reading University

Types of photographs

Wide rangePrintsNegatives (acetate, nitrate, glass plates, paper)TransparenciesSlidesDaguerreotypes and other special formatsDigital originals

Dressmaking class 1936: preparation for dress parade

John Ruskin's Daguerreotype of a group of windows in the façade of the Casa degli Zane, Venice

Glass plate negative

35mm B&W negative

Digital original

Characteristics of photographs

Multiple versions possible

Negative and the print and copy photography

Colour and monotones – fidelity is vital

May be fragile, dirty and even combustible

May be flexible or rigid, mounted or in strips (e.g. albums, slides, negative strips)

Will probably need special handling

Will benefit from specialist equipment

Capture methods for visual artefacts and photographs

Digital Imaging

digital cameras (as for manuscripts)

Scanning

flatbed scanners – primarily for prints and plates

drum scanners – primarily for transparencies

film scanners – specialist high end products

slide scanners – slides and transparencies

Handling

Every single interaction with a fragile original can compromise it

Many of these may be hundreds of years old …

… we want them to last for hundreds more years

So special handling is crucial

Handling

Conservation practice in human handling

Heat levels – most critical due to build up

Light levels

Dust-free environment

Image Quality

How do we know if it is good enough?Visual sharpnessLaterally reversed imagesDirtSkewImage completeness

Guidance available from the RLG Publications by Franziska Frey (Rochester Institute of Technology)

Case Study: CVMA

Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi – medieval stained glass

The content is only renderable from photographs of the subject.

Comprehensive database with high levels of descriptive metadata.

Further additions will include maps and church plans linked to window images.

Specifications of CVMA Digitisation

Source:35mm slides, medium & large format transparencies, photographic prints

Scanning dpi:35mm – 2,700 dpiMedium format – 1,200 dpiLarge format – 1,000 dpiPrint – 600 dpiAll 24-bit RGB colour

File formats:TIFF master (uncompressed)JPEG for web

Courtesy of CVMA Project, Courtauld Institute of Art

Case Study: Shetland Isles Museum

Glass plate collection - >80,000 items

In-house scanning using flatbed scanners

600 dpi, 8-bit greyscale specification

Delivered on the web with the option to buy content.

Online images are thus relatively small.

Large format originals

Maps

Drawings

Technical drawings – engineering or architectural

Very hard to scan – photographic surrogate is often the best method

Accurately representing scale is difficult

Representing this content online is difficult

Digitization options for 3-D objects

What do we mean by 3-D objects?Anything!SculpturePublic monumentsMachineryArchaeological artefactsBuildingsBooks

Digitization options for 3-D objects

What are the options?

2-D photography in single shots

2-D photography in multiple shotsresultant images stitched into a 3-D rendition using Quicktime

Video

Use of programs such as Macromedia Shockwave to create 3-D Virtual Reality

A Cosy Couple, Amanda Francis, 2-D photograph

Lewis and Clark magnetic compass

108 photographs stitched together

Quicktime VR

The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, University of Virginia

The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, University of Virginia

The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, University of Virginia

Panorama

Eternal Egypt Project

Shockwave

Eternal Egypt

Shockwave