Re: [MCN-L] Digitizing Photographs
As was passed on to me by the NEDCC, the light exposure from a flatbed scanner is similar to having the original object on exhibit for one day. With that in mind, you can decide. A camera copy stand will likely use powerful incandescent lights which are highly damaging, but for such a brief time that the result is the same - like one day on exhibit. LED lit type scanners produce very little UV light and the scanning can be considered harmless. As others have pointed out, be careful with handling and the forced flattening of any curled prints which will crack the gelatin. We've scanned many thousands of old BW prints this way. Personally, I find the results from a flatbed visually superior to the results from high-end photography, with the added benefit of no skew or fisheye.. Frank Kennedy, IT Manager Norman Rockwell Museum 9 Glendale Rd., PO BOX 308 Stockbridge, MA 01262 413-931-2216, fax 413-931-2316 http://www.nrm.org ___ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://mcn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/mcn-l@mcn.edu/
Re: [MCN-L] Adobe Creative Suite licensing
Hi Jenn TechSoup has Acrobat back again! :) :) :) Frank Kennedy, IT Manager Norman Rockwell Museum 9 Glendale Rd., PO BOX 308 Stockbridge, MA 01262 413-931-2216, fax 413-931-2316 http://www.nrm.org -- Message: 2 Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 10:02:17 -0500 From: Jennifer Schmitt jschm...@decordova.org To: mcn-l@mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] Adobe Creative Suite licensing Message-ID: caokk3kbdrb56vljhs7_1ow_nhm2ryl4fzvuawk2syoqbndx...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Hi all - I'm looking for advice on how to implement Adobe Creative Suite now that it has gone to a subscription model. We have, in the past, purchased one copy per fiscal year from Tech Soup. Tech Soup no longer offers CS, and when I contacted Adobe about a non-profit rate, it sent me to a list of resellers. The resellers seem to want to sell their add-ons, training, etc. All we need is a few licenses for Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I'm curious how others, especially with limited budgets, have handled this. Thanks! Jenn Schmitt ___ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://mcn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://www.mail-archive.com/mcn-l@mcn.edu/
[MCN-L] What ticketing?
I'm sure this is answered somewhere, but... Given: Ticketmaster Vista is being discontinued, so we have to switch to some other software. What admissions ticketing software package do you use? Would you recommend it? Thanks! Frank Kennedy, IT Manager Norman Rockwell Museum 9 Glendale Rd., PO BOX 308 Stockbridge, MA 01262 413-931-2216, fax 413-931-2316 http://www.nrm.org
[MCN-L] Color to Grayscale
In my experience with a large archives colletion, it *does* make a difference. Greyscale is typically 256 shades of grey. Basic color at 8 bits per channel is almost 17 million shades. Where this becomes apparent is in wide areas of gradation, like a photo with the sky showing, or an expanse of wall. With 256 shades of grey, banding can become visible in the sky where one shade changes abruptly to the next shade - I'm sure you've seen this happen. Also, sometimes the color of the paper, ink, stains and other things can become important at an unknown future date, so maybe you want to keep that information. Once you toss the color information and detail, you can never get it back. When trying to save hard drive space, consider using 8 bits per channel rather than 16 bits per channel in color images. Makes a huge difference in file size and I personally cannot detect a visible difference, even on very high-end reproductions. -frank
[MCN-L] NAS HDD
Hi Matthew At the Norman Rockwell Museum I backup exclusively to enormous direct-attached storage (DAS) arrays, but the concept is the same as network-attached storage (NAS) appliances. There are many advantages over tape: - More reliable with no tapes to change (or forget to change!) and no tapes to wear out and fail. - MUCH larger data storage than tape so I do not have to pick-and-choose what to back up. I back up everything. - Entire drive array is periodically swapped for an identical array which is kept off-site in a bank vault. - Instant restore jobs without tape swapping. For hardware, options vary wildly in price. One of the most economical appliances I've found is the Buffalo TeraStation Pro. The TeraStation Pro Quad has (4) 1TB drives. In RAID5, you'd have 3TB of online storage. If you want it even more reliability than RAID5, you can set it for RAID 10 with 2TB of storage. Much larger models are available. This is dirt cheap, under $900. Other models have Windows Storage Server OS if that familiar interface is appealing. http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage/professional-and-business-class-nas/terastation-pro-quad-1 I have gone the bomb-proof route with very large direct-attached storage (DAS) arrays rather than network-attached storage (NAS). I also mirror entire arrays between two buildings. The reason I prefer DAS over NAS is the drastic increase in data throughput. The speed is needed because 24 hours would not be enough time to copy the amount of data from a full backup into a NAS via 1Gbps Ethernet. The bulk of our data is stored on a second array on the same server as the backup array and it simply copies from one array to the other inside the same physical server at 6Gbps SAS. All this high-end stuff was funded by several collection digitization grants which included a budget line for server hardware. I also prefer DAS because I can expand the arrays when needed. I use (2) Dell MD1220 chassis with 24 SAS slots in each. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powervault-md1220/fs Frank Kennedy, IT Manager Norman Rockwell Museum 9 Glendale Rd., PO BOX 308 Stockbridge, MA 01262 413-931-2216, fax 413-931-2316 http://www.nrm.org
[MCN-L] [IT SIG:] Indexing system for museum photos (non-art, non-archives)
Hi All I'm looking for a way to index all of the various non-art/archives photos we generate. The most common request is, I need to find photos with Joe Somebody in them. Joe, being a board member, probably appears in 20 photos from various board functions, and is probably standing with 20 other people who you'd also like names for. The trouble is, the files are named like IMG_00915.tif. There being hundreds of thousands of images in hundreds of folders, you'll be lucky to find just 1 of the 20 photos. The only help you get is pretty good folder organization with event names and dates. We have a nice CMS which indexes terabytes of digitized art and archives, but that system is not at all appropriate for general users. The basic info I envision collecting would be like - Event name - Event date - Person name(s) (maybe with link to an address book) - Subject keywords (laughing, glamour shot, shows gallery layout, etc...) - Photographer credit line - Y/N permission for ourselves to publish - Y/N permission to share with other media organizations MS SharePoint could do this, and I can get it for cheap, but I want to keep the images as plain files, not move them into a terabyte-sized database. Thanks! Frank Kennedy, IT Manager Norman Rockwell Museum
