Thanks to all involved. Splendid time was had.

Don Williams and I will be presenting, Evaluation of 3D-Projection Image Capture at IS&T’s Archiving Conference at the Getty Museum Center in Los Angeles in May. Recently, we have been adapting imaging performance evaluation methods for images of 3D objects for digital collections.

More information here

Archiving 2015 will be held at the Getty Museum Center in Los Angeles

IS&T’s Archiving 2015 Conference will be held at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. This brings together a community of imaging novices and experts from libraries, archives, records management, and information technology institutions around the world.

The program, including presentations and short courses, has just been posted.

Information here

Preliminary Program PDF file here

Don Williams and I will be present our  4-hour course at the Electronic Imaging Symposium in San Francisco on 10 Feb.

We use a workshop / seminar discussion format.

New this year

• Raw image files for spatial performance measurement
• Don Williams’ imaging Standards Rodeo discussion of recent developments
• Intrinsic performance (reducing the influence of image processing)
• Simple statistical methods for reducing variability (with example Matlab functions)

Course information here

“The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from”

– attributed to A. S. Tanebaum

Research aimed at measuring the color variation in (eye) retinal imaging was reported in a poster and article at the Congress of the International Academy of Digital Pathology (IADP) recently. The authors, Christye Sisson, Susan Farnand, Mark Fairchild, (Rochester Institute of Tech.), and Bill Fischer (Univ. of Rochester) proposed the use of a model eye and a small color target.

The testing confirmed wide variation in color capture among fundus camera systems. In most cases, however, the performance differences were mitigated by custom color-correction software operations.

Such corrections, e.g. implemented by custom ICC color profiles, rely on reference test charts. The authors used a miniature (0.95 cm x 1.1 cm) version of a color test chart supplied by Don Williams,  and available from Image Science Associates.

ColorGauge Pico Target

The short article is available here.

Image capture performance:  The current issue of the IS&T Reporter newsletter includes a review of recent standards activities for digital cameras by Ann McCarthy.

Updates are covered for several ISO/TC 42 and ANSI efforts

• Geometric (optical) distortion measurement
• Shading (vignetting) measurement
• Digital camera (performance) specification guidelines
• Digital still cameras – JPEG 2000 profile
• Standards for Graphic Arts community and the CIE are also included

also
Archiving 2014 Conference Report
New: IS&T Crossword puzzle
-> IS&T Reporter

Mince pie with required splodge of Bird’s custard

OK, a snapshot of my first mince pie of the season may not qualify as cultural heritage imaging, but you probably have an equivalent at your house. While we are on the subject …

Please consider participating in IS&T’s Archiving 2015 Conference, to be held next May at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Here is the Call for Papers

As you will see, a range of topics are covered in the meeting,

• digital preservation
• partnerships, managing content and curation
• preserving dynamic media
• using tools and services

and, yes imaging technology for libraries and museums.

                     Abstract submission deadline: 8 Dec. 2014 

Judit Martinez Bauza, Qualcomm Inc, and I will be presenting the results of a study to develop a method for intrinsic camera resolution evaluation. This will be part of the Image Quality and System Performance Conference, http://spie.org/EI/conferencedetails/image-quality-system-performance

The measure is intended to ‘see through’ operations for which image detail is retrievable but measure the loss of image resolution otherwise. We adopt a two-stage image capture model. The first stage comprises a locally-stable point-spread function (lens), the integration and sampling by the detector (imager), and the introduction of detector noise. The second stage comprises the spatial image processing. We describe the validation of the method, which was done using both simulation and actual camera evaluations.

National Public Radio today broadcast a story about a web-based tool for organizing and searching the US Library of Congress’s large collection of depression-era (1935-46) Photographs. The collection was created by US Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information.

Photogrammar, organized by Professor Laura Wexler and a team at Yale University, provides several ways to explore the collection.  Links are provided to the posted digital records, including the high-resolution digital images.

Medical unit training, Greenville SC. Jack Delano 1943.

Film (Re-) Scanning: The original film scanning was performed in the 1990s, but in 2010 the Library of Congress (LC) started a project to rescan the film originals, following improvements in image capture technology. This effort is initially focusing on the most at-risk film negatives, according to Don Williams who contributes to imaging performance monitoring and standards for LC. Don (Image Science Associates) and I provide both consulting and tools to support this and other image quality assurance programs. The project is ongoing.

Scanner test target

FADGI: The guidelines used to maintain consistent imaging performance were developed under the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI), and include techniques that Don and I present in our series of courses and workshops, e.g. IS&T’s Archiving Conference. In 2015 the conference will be held at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

• NPR Story
• Photogrammar Tool
• Library of Congress, Digitizing the Collection
• FADGI Guidelines
• Image Science Associates

Peter D. Burns, Burns Digital Imaging LLC