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Alan NewmanChief, Imaging and Visual Services

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

MCN2009 - November 13

Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS)

In late 2004 the Gallery began direct imaging of collection objects instudios with high-resolution, color accurate digital cameras. We adhereto ICC and ISO industry standard color-managed workflow for imagecapture, display, evaluation and output. This is a rigorous, labor-intensive color matching process---as Stanley said, think SLOW. RapidCapture or RapCap or Speed the Plow is a methodology to get 90%quality for 10% of the effort with 1,000% the production.

Rapid Capture Goals Staff Training Initial Software Setup

Software Settings Color Profile

Artwork Preparation Photography Image Cataloging

Rapid CaptureImaging and Visual Services (DIVS)

Assembly-line imaging is modeled after museum projects at Harvard(kudos to Sam Quigley for pushing the idea), Chicago and the BritishMuseum. Of course assembly line imaging grew out of the Google Bookand other archives and library digitization projects in the early nineties.Even before, the AIC build a copystand with two cameras on a wheel toshoow 35mm b&w & color slides on each for all the originaldrawings.For its time it was a trailblazer, but quality was surpassed by today’shigh-end DSLRs. We shot 1,000 Max Beckmann sketches in 2007 as aproof of concept. Our choice of camera is the Canon5D MarII whichgives the best cost/quality return.

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Rapid CaptureImaging and Visual Services (DIVS)

Massive infusion of collection images on Gallerywebsite

Increase web images from present 8,000 to23,000 in 2011

and 55,000 by 2013

From 6% (2009) to 49% (2013) of collection

Provide free images of works in the public domainfor non-commercial, educational uses.

The critical goal is to show what has not been seen and distribute whatis seen in an effortless way. We just began a two year project funded atthe Gallery by the Samuel Kress Foundation. We pledged to provideany image we shoot in the public domain free to scholars and thegeneral public, for any non commercial use.

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Rapid CaptureImaging and Visual Services (DIVS)

A large yield of images is only possible with a differentquality assurance model.90% quality for 10% effort and 1,000% the production.Color is profiled for each discrete lighting setup.Images are very good quality for the web and permitpan/zoom to show detail. Currently using Canon5DII 22mpImages can be used for print reproductions in the futureand can be finely color matched to the original on an adhoc basis for high-end publication.We should not need to reshoot.

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Rapid CaptureImaging and Visual Services (DIVS)

“…we believe [this grant] will put the Gallery at the forefront ofmajor art museums seeking to enlist emerging technologies insupport of both the preservation and the provision of access totheir collections. The Kress Foundation's Board of Trustees isespecially pleased to know that the Gallery will make thethousands of digitized images produced through this importantproject available online, at high resolution and free-of-charge,for scholarly and educational use, including reproduction inscholarly publications; … that the Gallery is firmly committed tothis goal. We applaud the Gallery for seeking to establish amodel that holds the promise of addressing perhaps the singlegreatest challenge faced by art historical publishing today,which other art museums will feel compelled to adopt….”

So we are addressing a potential crisis in art publishing, i.e. thecontinued rise in fees for a commodity that once made has ameaningless cost to the museum to maintain and distribute.We’ll have further discussion about these issues tomorrow withAmalyah, Simon Tanner and John in a session unfortunately titledperverse-reverse economics.

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Rapid CaptureImaging and Visual Services (DIVS)

Art Handling

Workflow Orientation

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Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS) Rapid Capture

Initial one-time setup of preferences in the various software packagesto establish:• watch folders for automatic ingestion and image processing inLightroom• automatic file naming• export specifications

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Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS) Rapid Capture

Adobe DNG Profile Editor is used for creating a camera profile inLightroom. Using the “chart” method provides a colorimetric calibrationthat performs reasonably well for most artwork.

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Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS) Rapid Capture

Shot # ObjectID ObjectNo Attribution Title Class Location Existing Digital

1 4678 1943.3.1534 Sir Muirhead Bone Vega of Granada DrawingBox1/D,BR,XX,

BONE,2/7no

2 4684 1943.3.1540 Sir Muirhead BoneRoman Bridge,

ZamoraDrawing

Box1/D,BR,XX,BONE,2/7

no

3 4685 1943.3.1541 Sir Muirhead BoneRiver at Gerona,

SpainDrawing

Box1/D,BR,XX,BONE,2/7

no

4 4688 1943.3.1544 Sir Muirhead Bone Evening in Ronda DrawingBox1/D,BR,XX,

BONE,2/7no

5 4691 1943.3.1547 Sir Muirhead Bone Gerona Road DrawingBox1/D,BR,XX,

BONE,2/7no

6 4682 1943.3.1538 Sir Muirhead BonePraying Bench, San

Pedro, GeronaDrawing

Box1/D,BR,XX,BONE,2/7

no

7 4692 1943.3.1548 Sir Muirhead Bone Dawn, Cuenca DrawingBox1/D,BR,XX,

BONE,2/7no

8 5055 1943.3.1894 Sir Muirhead BoneOld Asturian

Houses, OviedoDrawing

Box1/D,BR,XX,BONE,2/7

no

Before Photography:The Museum Tech will create a list of the artworksto be photographed for a given day.

This list will originate in TMS as an object package.The final list for photography must be in spreadsheet formwith object numbers or TMS IDS included as a distinctcolumn and a column of sequence numbers beginning at1. The spreadsheet of artworks to be photographed willbe sent to the photographer and to DIVS imagecatalogers. We use copy-paste instead of typing to linkfilenam to accession#.

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Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS) Rapid Capture

Exposure is determined using a BabelColor White target in order tomaximize the exposure without clipping the highlights. Each artwork isphotographed with the grayscale patches of the Macbeth ColorCheckerand a ruler. If it is an abstract work of art, then an arrow is included toindicate orientation.The lens is set to f/8.0, since this was determined in previous testing toprovide the optimal MTF for that camera/lens combination.

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Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS) Rapid Capture

James McBey, A Tinker Child, Macduff, 1914

To help keep the “rapid” in rapid capture, whenever possible theartwork is photographed with the matte closed and this is then used asa cropping guide.All post-processing is done in Adobe Lightroom. The only work thatneeds to be done manually is to crop the image and rotate if necessary.Because cropping is done in Lightroom, it is non-destructive and can bechanged at any time as needed.

The last step for the photographer is to export the images to DNGformat.

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Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS) Rapid Capture

DNG files are imported into Extensis Portfolio, the image databasecurrently used at NGA. Metadata is imported from TMS and the ImageCatalogers review and assign additional metadata.

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Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS) Rapid Capture

This is another view into the same image database showing a technicalapproval by a second photographer (general exposure & color) and themuseum technician who approves the orientation and the correct matchof unique object id (accession#) to the image. So all approvals andworkflows take place online.

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Imaging and Visual Services (DIVS) Rapid Capture