[MCN-L] Tracking your iPods
I'm wondering what other institutions who are hosting their audio tours on an iPod Touch are doing to make sure that the devices don't walk off campus? This was never too much of a problem when we were using Acoustiguides, as these devices had little appeal outside our walls. Currently we are requiring visitors to surrender their driver's license while they have the device, however this has some obvious flaws-- some people do not have one, or if they are going to the airport right after their visit and they have forgotten to return the device, they can't get on their flight (this has happened). We have been reluctant to hold a passport, as this is a serious document, and visitors can be reluctant to give it up, and there is some institutional reluctance to take possession of it. We have thought about just scanning a credit card, but not all of our visitors have these either. Any comments would be appreciated. Stanley Smith Head of Collection Information and Access J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] TMS on a Mac
At the Getty we have a pretty big contingent of Mac users (imaging folks, designers, Publications), and they all need to access our collection management system, TMS. Currently they do this by using a shared PC that lives in a jump seat within their departments, but is away from their desks-- making things as simple as cut-and-paste impossible. Our IT department has so far been reluctant to allow virtualization of Windows on our Macs (using either VMware or Parallels). I'd be interested to find out if other museums are able to access Windows programs on their Macs, and if so have there been any problems related to this configuration (security, update, of performance issues). Thanks in advance for your feedback! Stanley Smith Head of Collection Information and Access J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] Mouldering Slide Library
I'm wondering if anyone else out there has this problem: Our slide library is taking up valuable real estate, and the last time anyone checked out a slide was about a year ago, and I think that person had the word "emeritus" after their name. These are not just slides of objects in the Getty collection, but a huge number of study slides purchased from commercial vendors. My idea several years ago to scan the slides was nixed by our legal council who scrutinized our purchase agreements, discovering that when we purchased the slides we were agreeing to not ever scan them (presumably so the vendor could sell us a digital version in the future). With the resources available to all of us today (ArtStor and Google), scanning our own slides may just be duplicating images that are already available. We don't even have slide projectors anymore. So. I think we are just going to dump them. Unless anyone else has a better idea. We would like to give them to another non-profit institution, but I'm not sure if any would want them. This is a BIG collection-- over 100,000 slides. Ideas welcome. Stanley Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] Rapid Digitization workflows
Hi Gunter-- At MCN 2009 I organized a panel called "Speed the Plow: Rapid Capture Digital Workflow". On the panel was Alan Newman from the National Gallery, Chris Edwards and John ffrench from Yale, Chris Edwards from ARTIC, and myself (Getty). I compiled the notes from all institutions into a single PDF, and I am attaching it here. At the Getty our Rapid Capture project was put into place to address the backlog of our Photography collection. We encountered a lot of unexpected institutional resistance, mostly centered around questions of quality. Some felt that if it is done faster it necessarily must result in an inferior product. Really the only difference between our normal workflow and the rapid capture is that we do not do a comparative color correction at the time of capture. It is surprising how much more you can get done if you eliminate this step-- we are doing up to 100 per day with a single operator-- easily five times the productivity. Critical color correction is done as needed. Cheers, Stanley Message: 5 Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:42:11 -0400 From: "Waibel,Guenter" Subject: [MCN-L] rapid digitization workflows To: Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain;charset="iso-8859-1" Hi everybody, I've recently had the good fortune of seeing the rapid digitization process the National Gallery has set up for its works-on-paper. (I know Alan and Peter are on this list, so rather than bungling the details, I'll leave it to them to describe what they're doing - needless to say, it's impressive.) At MCN, I've overheard that various other folks are working on rapid imaging workflows, or already have them in place - the Art Institute, Harvard U Art Museum, Yale U Art Gallery, MoMA come to mind. I'd be curious to hear who has an established workflow, what you are imaging, and what your throughput is as compared to your high-end workflow. Cheers, G?nter -- Message: 6 Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:54:53 +0100 From: "James Stevenson" Subject: Re: [MCN-L] rapid digitization workflows To: Message-ID: <4C48838F02EA0002C490 at vammail.vam.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Guenter, I feel that everything we do now at the V&A can be classed as a rapid image project. Not least because of the likely changes to funding which we will soon be faced with, and the consequence of having to justify productivity. With a large collection and a lot of gallery developments we have been rapidly capturing entire galleries and stores for at least ten years. These have ranged from smallish groups of objects of up to 100 until our recent photography of our ceramics collections for a suite of ten galleries which resulted in 38000 images of 29000 objects. This took there and half years but the last six months saw up to six sets making 18000 images. Next we are faced with digitising up 9 textile objects of all shapes and sizes over three years. In the V&A we have a large range of object types so these projects can be on anything from furniture and jewellery to works on paper. It is our intention to have an image of 80% of the collection in the next eight years so this will mean massive production rates. As for workflow it is a constantly changing approach. Different object types mean different approaches, but as I think previous emails on this subject have suggested then they need to be planned in advance. And trials undertaken to check them out. Regards james James Stevenson Photographic Manager Victoria and Albert Museum South Kensington London UK tel +44 (0) 207 942 2545 fax +44 (0) 207 942 2746 www.vam.ac.uk Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286 >>> "Waibel,Guenter" 22/07/10 4:44 PM >>> Hi everybody, I've recently had the good fortune of seeing the rapid digitization process the National Gallery has set up for its works-on-paper. (I know Alan and Peter are on this list, so rather than bungling the details, I'll leave it to them to describe what they're doing - needless to say, it's impressive.) At MCN, I've overheard that various other folks are working on rapid imaging workflows, or already have them in place - the Art Institute, Harvard U Art Museum, Yale U Art Gallery, MoMA come to mind. I'd be curious to hear who has an established workflow, what you are imaging, and what your throughput is as compared to your high-end workflow. Cheers, G?nter ___ 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 at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options
[MCN-L] General photography question
Hello Maggie, You are not alone in your dilemma regarding analog vs digital image capture. Even though most institutions are not shooting film any longer (for good reason), most of us have archives of analog images that we need to still call upon for a multitude of uses. I will say, however, that when we are using an image for publication and we compare the old transparency with the artwork, the curators usually order a new direct digital capture. Why is this? Because nearly every metric of image quality will favor direct digital capture. Lets face facts-- transparencies were never a very good way to represent artwork. The problem is that they were rarely actually compared with the original art, and when they were the viewing conditions and media were too different to make an objective judgment-- the artwork was often on the wall of a gallery, and the transparency was a glowing jewel on a lightbox-- hardly the best comparative situation. Most often the transparency became the original, and publications were deemed successful if they matched it, never mind if the rendition was different from the original. However, I can't really say that direct digital capture is all sweetness and light. It is deceptively difficult to render an "exact" match to the colors and tone of a painting. Nearly impossible, actually. The RGB sensors on even the very high-end cameras simply must do too much math to interpret the millions of colors in the world by examining their response to only three-- red, green and blue. Multi-spectral cameras are much better at this, but they are rare, difficult to use, and not at all mainstream yet. Your post is asking for advice. I would say that you should not consider film as an ongoing capture method. I would discourage a hybrid approach as well. I know of no major museums that are still shooting film. That said, you should realize that a digital workflow is fraught with many problems of its own, the least of which is that digital image files have no physicality, and issues of storage, organization, access and connection with object metadata will loom large. File security, control, unauthorized distribution, uncontrolled editing, and the need to calibrate every aspect of the workflow are not trivial. If you have been working with photographers who have primarily used film in the past, it can be a difficult transition for them to make, requiring lots of retraining. It's beyond the scope of this forum to get into these issues in much detail, but I would encourage you to attend conferences (MCN, of course), and join several museum-specific forums that foster collaboration and information exchange. ImageMuse is a good one--it it an online forum that has over 100 members and 57 institutions from all over the world: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ImageMuse/ A source of basic imaging guidelines for digital workflow can be found at UpDig : http://www.updig.org/ This site has two really good pdf files you can download that have a wealth of information as well as a couple of pages of useful links. Stanley Smith Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286 >>> 6/28/2010 12:00 PM >>> Send mcn-l mailing list submissions to mcn-l at mcn.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to mcn-l-request at mcn.edu You can reach the person managing the list at mcn-l-owner at mcn.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of mcn-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. off topic : U3-X Personal Mobility Prototype (Hanan Cohen) 2. General photography question (Maggie Hanson) 3. Re: General photography question (David Lynx) 4. Re: General photography question (Travis Fullerton) 5. Re: General photography question (Zogg, Del) 6. Re: General photography question (Natalie Russo) 7. Re: General photography question (Faith McClellan) 8. Re: General photography question (Maggie Hanson) 9. Re: General photography question (Frank E. Thomson) 10. Re: General photography question (Zogg, Del) -- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:21:58 +0300 From: "Hanan Cohen" Subject: [MCN-L] off topic : U3-X Personal Mobility Prototype To: "Museum Computer Network Listserv" Message-ID: <38A562F9B9615940BD347797ACD838C87D0433 at server.mada.com> Content-Type: text/plain;charset="us-ascii" Hi, Watch this video. It's a "sit down Segway" by Honda. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuIJRsAuCHQ At the end of the video, you can see it used in a museum. An "old school&qu
[MCN-L] Digital Media SIG: Current Practices in Fine Art Reporduction
A Mellon funded study by Susan Farand and Franziska Frey of the Rochester Institute of Technology: http://artimaging.rit.edu/ June 16-18 This symposium will present results of a 30-month project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that was undertaken to evaluate current practices in fine art image reproduction, determine the image quality generally achievable today, and establish a suggested framework for art image interchange. Results from multiple experiments will be among the inputs used to construct a conceptual framework of the various types of imaging taking place in cultural institutions at present. Results of the project to date will be presented along with related presentations from other experts. The symposium is designed for people involved in all aspects of art image reproduction in museums, libraries and archives. Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] Google Apps
After using Google Apps and Google Docs for a couple of weeks on a specific project, I have to ask: Why on earth would anyone ever again spend a dime on Microsoft Office? Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] Digital Media SIG: Minutes from DM SIG meeting in Portland
Normal 0 0 1 865 4936 41 9 6061 11.1282 0 0 0 MCN Digital Media SIG meeting minutes, Portland, OR, Nov. 13,2009 The annual meeting of the MCN digital Media SIG was held at the MCN conference in Portland on Friday at 5:30, just prior to the SIG Pub Crawl. The meeting this year had some new faces, with 13 people attending. The meeting opened with the SIG Chairman, Stanley Smith giving a brief review of what the SIG?s primary function has been for MCN-- primarily choosing and hosting seminars, talks or panels for the annual conference. This year?s panel was Speed the Plow: Rapid Capture Digital Workflow, which highlighted rapid capture case studies from five institutions. The panel was well attended, and had extensive follow-up from many of the audience later in the conference. Erik Landsberg from MoMA talked about the recent meeting of the ImageMuse group in NYC. ImageMuse is a somewhat informal group of imaging managers from over 60 institutions from all over the world. ImageMuse primarily meets online via a listserv, but does try to get together in person occasionally?usually in concert with major conferences or tradeshows. The ImageMuse listserv is a great place for imaging managers to pose questions, discuss technical issues, and generally stay in touch with each other throughout the year. It was decided at the meeting in NYC that ImageMuse would open membership to more institutions?hopefully doubling participation. We discussed the desirability of bringing more MCN members to the ImageMuse listserv, and this fits nicely with the current efforts at ImageMuse to broaden its reach. Alan Newman from the National Gallery of Art posted the following on the MCN listserv yesterday, and I will repeat it here: ImageMuse is a group of museum imaging and publishing professionals. We have worked together to define guidelines for the creation and use of digital files for reproduction. Our work resulted in the 2007 UPDIG Digital Image Submission Guide for Fine Art Reproduction at http://updig.org/disg/fineart.php A number of ImageMuse museums are working with Franziska Frey, McGhee Professor in the School of Print Media at Rochester Institute of Technology, through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to research the art image interchange cycle and to extend current industry practices and standards. Additionally, we continue to work together to share basic information on Digital Asset Management applications, color profiling of DSLR cameras, rapid capture workflows and other technical issues in our work. We are looking to expand our membership from the current 60 members (from 28 organizations?mostly large American institutions) to 150 members representing 75 organizations large and small and significantly international. If you are the head of a museum or archives imaging department, a DAM manager or a publications production manager you can join ImageMuse at the following web address http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ImageMuse/ click Join this Group to submit a request for membership. We discussed possible content for next year?s conference. Several museums at the meeting have been participating in a new Mellon-funded Benchmark project being conducted by Franziska Frey from RIT. This project is an extension of a seminal benchmarking project that was finished in 2005 by Franziska and Roy Berns called ?Direct Digital Capture of Cultural Heritage Benchmarking American Museum Practices and Defining Future Needs?. http://www.cis.rit.edu/museumSurvey/documents/Benchmark_Final_Report_Web.pdf The current project is called ?Benchmarking Art Image Interchange Cycles?, and deals with how publishing workflows affect the quality and rendering of our images. This has always been a significant issue for institutions that publish images of their objects, and Franziska has devised a way to measure several key points in this workflow?in a quantitative way. The conference presenting her results is in June of 2010, and we are hoping to get Franziska (and co-author Susan Farnand) to come to Austin in November to present their findings to MCN. We also talked about presenting a panel that highlights some lesser-known and more technical ways of capturing images of our objects. This may include multi-spectral and hyper-spectral capture, High Dynamic Range methods, Reflection Transformation Imaging (RTI), Polynomial Texture mapping (PTM), as well as information on conservation techniques such as UV and IR capture. This idea has some good support, and I believe we may propose a session for Austin. Another idea expressed for next year is to have some way to present a follow-up for the case studies that were presented in the Rapid Capture panel?maybe a poster presentation, or a short presentation along with a more detailed document. After the meeting we adjourned to the Rose and Thistle?a popular Scottish bar near the hotel. While it was difficult to discuss imaging issues
[MCN-L] Digital Media SIG-- Conference Slides: Speed the Plow
Slides and related documents from Speed the Plow: Rapid Capture Imaging Workflow have been posted on the SlideShare MCN 2009 page: http://www.slideshare.net/event/museum-computer-network-2009 Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] Digital Publishing
I forgot to post this link with info about the program: http://www.getty.edu/foundation/funding/access/current/online_cataloging.html Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] Digital Publishing
The Getty Grant e-publishing projects (called the Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative) that Alan mentioned are these: Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. For the planning of an online scholarly catalogue of the 19th-century European paintings collection. $240,000 Museum Associates, Los Angeles, California. For the planning of an online scholarly catalogue of the Southeast Asian art collection. $240,000 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. For the planning of an online scholarly catalogue of the 17th-century Dutch paintings collection. $140,700 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California. For the planning of an online scholarly catalogue of works by Robert Rauschenberg in the permanent collection. $240,000 Seattle Art Museum, Washington. For the planning of an online scholarly catalogue of the Chinese painting and calligraphy collection. $240,000 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. For the planning of an online scholarly catalogue of the Gerhard Pulverer Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. $200,000 Tate Gallery, London, England. For the planning of an online scholarly catalogue of the Camden Town Group. ?137,800 Walker Art Center, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota. For the planning of an online scholarly catalogue of new acquisitions from 2005 to the present. $200,000 Stanley smith Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] Workflow Software
We use WorkHorse. http://www.whgroup.us/ We have integrated this with TMS, and can easily import object packages into the WorkHorse flow. It is very powerful web based software that uses Cold Fusion at its core. It does have e-mail reporting, as well as a good report generator. Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286 >>> 6/8/2009 12:00 PM >>> Send mcn-l mailing list submissions to mcn-l at mcn.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to mcn-l-request at mcn.edu You can reach the person managing the list at mcn-l-owner at mcn.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of mcn-l digest..." Message: 2 Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 09:47:02 -0400 From: "Jeff Steward" Subject: [MCN-L] Workflow Software To: Message-ID: <000901c9e83f$9ab61e20$4b54f78c at huam.harvard.edu> Content-Type: text/plain;charset="iso-8859-1" Apologies for cross-posting. Our collections management team is investigating workflow software. Their requirements are below. Ideally we are looking for a Java, web based solution. If anyone has implemented something similar or has done any investigation into workflow software your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. -- Dear colleagues, As our museum moves away from a model where curatorial staff manage their own storage spaces to one where Collections Management facilitates access to storage, we have begun to look about for an existing work flow application to integrate with our TMS database. Ideally this application would facilitate art handling requests, formalizing the process beyond email/phone calls/hallway conversations to provide our curatorial and conservation staff with a user-friendly solution for their requests. Specifically we envision staff using the application to refer to TMS object packages when making requests for object movement/installation/mounts/study appointments, etc. Requests would trigger email(s) to the appropriate staff and create a secure, manageable list with deadlines for our chief preparator to oversee. Does anyone have any recommendations for an out-of-the-box or home grown system that they would be willing to share? We would be most grateful! Best wishes, Dorothy D?vila Associate Registrar for Collections Harvard Art Museum 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 www.harvardartmuseum.org -- Jeff Steward Digital Information and Technology Department 617-495-0785 jeff_steward at harvard.edu Harvard Art Museum 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 www.harvardartmuseum.org --
[MCN-L] Image Sizes
If you think that your images are not out there, you are mistaken. At the Getty we have taken pains to manage how our images migrate from our walls, but a quick Google image search of ?Irises? and ?Van Gogh? will yield hundreds of hits (the most hilarious of which is a line of dog-themed ceramic plates with the painting serving as background to visages of various breeds). This is not too concerning, as the artwork itself is in the public domain, and Bridgeman v. Corel says that we can?t claim photographic copyright?so all?s fair in love and war. Speaking of Bridgeman, though, I recently tried to order a print of the same painting from Bridgeman?s website. I am conducting research for a possible print-on-demand service at the Getty --(yes Will, if there is money to be made we should be the ones making it!) -- I wanted to see what other commercial ventures were doing with our images?mostly a quality survey. I foolish used my Getty mailing address when placing the order (a 20 x 24 archival inkjet print on fine-art paper for about $70). Two days later I got an email from Bridgeman stating: ?We regret to inform you that your order of 'Irises,1889' (supplier code BAL40070) cannot be processed due to the transparency being unsuitable for reproduction. The Bridgeman Art Library have advised that the quality of this particular print would be compromised by enlarging it beyond the image size and as a result we have been forced to cancel and refund your order. The image will be removed from our site within the next couple of days to avoid any future disappointment. Even Bridgeman was nervous about copyright issues! Irises was removed from their website the next day. There is really no possible way to prevent your images from getting out in the world. Those CD?s or transparencies that you have sent for scholar requests or publications over the years are still out there, and can fall into any number of hands. Current imaging software is very good at ?rezing? up small image image files into ones that can be used for print. Current stitching software can easily reconstruct Zoomify panes into a very high resolution image. Even if you disable the ability to right-click an image for download, nothing can stop someone from using a screen grab. The best we can do, I think, is to make sure that recipients of our images know exactly what their usage rights are. But we should not be surprised when some people ignore our directives. The PLUS coalition has a great product that helps track and enforce image rights, and they are developing a profile that is specific to museums. A couple of years ago I was exploring other ways to track our images in the ?cloud?. As a test, I gave a company called Idee a set of 400 jpegs of paintings from our collection. They had developed software that crawls the web looking for images based not on text data, but on the images themselves. The results of this test were astonishing?they had hundreds of hits. Ultimately it was not technology that we were willing to adopt?one reason was who has time to sent hundreds of cease-and-desist letters to obscure websites, some of which may have had the images legitimately? Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] Print on Demand
The Getty is seriously considering such a project as well, and are in the planning stages. We will likely partner with an outside vendor to provide the prints and fulfill the orders-- we will simply not have the internal resources to fulfill what is likely to be a large quantity of orders. That said, we will have complete control over the quality and "look" of the delivered product, and the vendor will be invisible to the customer-- prints will be delivered with Getty packaging. I do believe that current ink-jet technology and paper options now conspire to provide an extraordinary opportunity for museums to leverage their collections into a revenue-producing service, one that will likely further their missions as well. Don't think of these prints as "posters". A well printed ink-jet print on good rag paper is a very different animal, with a much higher perceived value that a poster. Ink-jet prints have good archival qualities as well-- unlike offset printed posters. But the best thing is we will not be limited by "print-run economics". One print costs as much to produce (per print) as twenty. This allows us not to just offer the "greatest hits", but hands control to our visitors-- they can select anything from our collection (that we have the rights to reproduce). We are currently researching kiosk options-- I am unaware of existing software to do this, unless you partner with a company that will offer your prints within the context of their own company. We would rather have the service identified only with our institution. There are many "shopping cart" solutions that could work, but these may need customization. We envision a kiosk near the museum store, and maybe near selected galleries-- we are currently researching kiosk options. A web presence may also make sense. I do have some further research available that I would be happy to email directly to interested parties. Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum ssmith at getty.edu
[MCN-L] photography, digitization, and a color/grey card?
Ah. the bygone days of the 4x5 transparency. For those publishers who lament the passing of transparencies I can only say this: be happy they are gone. We have been fooling ourselves for a long time but did not realize it until really good direct digital capture came to the fore. It turns out that transparency film is actually a dreadful medium for reproducing artwork. It has a very limited dynamic range, and a color gamut that often missed the colors of the original artwork. How can this have been allowed to happen, you may ask? In those days the workflow reality was that by the time the film came back from the lab, the painting was often out of the studio, so conducting a direct comparison was impossible. Even when it was possible to compare a transparency with an original, the 4x5 chrome was a glowing jewel on a light box, and the painting was illuminated by room light. The reality is that publishers never had to print an accurate rendition of the original artwork-- they just had to match the transparency. The transparency became the original-- and it could easily travel to the separator and the printing plant, and be directly compared to a proof or even a press sheet. We achieve much more "accurate" reproductions with direct digital captures; however it comes at a price. Things are much more complicated. ICC color management works really well-- but only if implemented correctly. However, it is very complex-- (review Ken's post-- dense stuff, and I'm sure he was dumbing it down for us!) A single misapplied color profile can throw things WAY off. As Ken accurately pointed out, in such a situation the grayscale might well look perfect! Not all is hopeless, though. Direct digital capture is fast, and it is possible to perform good color adjustments in a controlled environment very quickly-- enabling direct comparisons with artwork while it is still in the studio. However it requires a very different approach than shooting transparencies. Calibration is important. Viewing environments must be controlled. In other words, this subject goes way beyond grayscales and color bars, but rather highlights the need to establish clear guidelines and procedures. Thankfully there are lots of initiatives to do this, some of which are highlighted at the upcoming MCN conference. Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] DM SIG an the MCN conference
The Digital Media SIG will be meeting Thursday from 6-7 at the MCN conference, but I wanted to alert members to another opportunity to shmooze further with other imaging geeks. Alan Newman is hosting an ImageMuse Business Meeting and Lunch following his panel on Friday. The lunch will be at the National Gallery of Art, East Building 4th floor conference room, between 1.00-3.00pm. If you are interested in attending you must RSVP by November 5 directly to Alan at a-newman at nga.gov. A meeting agenda will follow. Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286
[MCN-L] photography, digitization, and a color/grey card?
A couple of comments regarding the use of grayscale and color bars: ? due to differences between dyes and/or pigments used to make the color bars and the materials used to produce the actual artwork, accurately rendering the grayscales in a particular image may NOT produce the most accurate rendition of the artwork itself. ? If there is some visual editing to tweak color into place (hopefully under calibrated viewing conditions with direct comparisons to the original artwork), then another operator who may be printing the image later will most likely UNDO those edits if they assume that the image is rendered correctly by printing a neutral grayscale. ? There is some interest in the production of "virtual" grayscales and color bars. These would be digitally dropped into the edited and color corrected image with the same colorspace as the original image. Then other users would achieve better color when they match the grayscale and color bars. ? If it is your decision to incorporate grayscales and color bars, then it is really not good practice to only do it once for a "batch". It is too difficult to mate up the correct grayscales with subsequent images-- especially years hence. Put them in every image. Stanley Smith Manager, Imaging Services J. Paul Getty Museum 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1000 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687 (310) 440-7286 >>> 10/15/2008 12:00 PM >>> Send mcn-l mailing list submissions to mcn-l at mcn.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to mcn-l-request at mcn.edu You can reach the person managing the list at mcn-l-owner at mcn.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of mcn-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. photography, digitization, and a color/grey card? (Jansonius, Remko (Vizcaya)) 2. Re: photography, digitization, and a color/grey card? (Frank E. Thomson) 3. Re: photography, digitization, and a color/grey card? (Tim Atherton) 4. Re: photography, digitization, and a color/grey card? (Nilsen, Dianne) 5. IP SIG: No fair use for thumbnails in Germany (akeshet at imj.org.il) 6. IP SIG: McCain-Palin, DMCA, YouTube, and Fair Use (akeshet at imj.org.il) 7. Re: photography, digitization, and a color/grey card? (Genevieve De mahy) 8. Digitization - definition and strategic planning (Diane M. Zorich) 9. free ftp software? (Jansonius, Remko (Vizcaya)) 10. Re: free ftp software? (Edwards, Chris) 11. Re: free ftp software? (Daniel M. Bartolini) 12. Re: free ftp software? (Elizabeth Bruton) 13. Re: free ftp software? (Tracy Davenport) 14. Re: free ftp software? (Melissa Johnson) 15. The Museum System on Mac via VMWare Fusion (Jeff Evans) 16. Re: free ftp software? (Perian Sully) -- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:04:21 -0400 From: "Jansonius, Remko (Vizcaya)" Subject: [MCN-L] photography, digitization, and a color/grey card? To: Message-ID: <9C2785C9A3152441B3AAC2E03346BC4C039C0AD3 at s0141136.miamidade.gov> Content-Type: text/plain;charset="us-ascii" Dear Colleagues, We are about to digitize a collection of photo albums containing 1910s/20s photographs; while they are black and white, many have discolored and turned sepia over the years. Since these are fragile, bound volumes we will be doing this through photography rather than scanning. Would you say it is necessary or advisable or standard practice to use a color card or a grey card during this process? As always, I greatly appreciate y'all's input! Sincerely, Remko Jansonius Collections and Archives Manager Vizcaya Museum and Gardens Miami, FL -- Message: 2 Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:06:12 -0400 From: "Frank E. Thomson" Subject: Re: [MCN-L] photography, digitization, and a color/grey card? To: Museum Computer Network Listserv Message-ID: <6905D9194DC5B6489FA18E7E0763D9740701097682 at server4.ashart.local> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I would suggest shooting an image of the color bar at the start of each session, maybe not in every image. But it would be helpful later trying to match color and value. Frank Thomson, Curator Asheville Art Museum PO Box 1717 Asheville, NC 28802 828.253.3227 tel 828257.4503 fax www.ashevilleart.org -Original Message- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Jansonius, Remko (Vizcaya) Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 5:04 PM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] photography, digitization, and a color/grey card? Dear Colleagues, We are about to digitize a collection of photo albums containing 1910s/20s phot
