Brief Abstract:

This talk will present highlights of the principles and practices for robust photography-based digital techniques in conservation and related museum contexts. Examples of existing and cutting-edge uses of photography-based imaging will be presented, including Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), Algorithmic Rendering (AR), camera calibration, and methods of imaged-based generation of textured 3D geometry. Adoption of these technologies in the museum community is growing.

These practices are part of the emerging science known as Computational Photography. The talk will examine how these empirical acquisition technologies can generate scientifically reliable digital representations that enable future reuse for novel purposes, assist the long-term digital preservation of the digital representation, aid the physical conservation of the digitally represented museum materials, and enable public access and research.

Abstract:

This talk will present highlights of the principles and practices for robust photography-based digital techniques in conservation and related museum contexts. Examples of existing and cutting-edge uses of photography-based imaging will be presented, including Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), Algorithmic Rendering (AR), camera calibration, and methods of imaged-based generation of textured 3D geometry. Adoption of these technologies in the museum community is growing.

These practices are part of the emerging science known as Computational Photography. This imaging family’s common feature is the purpose-driven selective extraction of information from sequences of standard digital photographs. The information is extracted from the photographic sequences by computer algorithms. The extracted information is then integrated into new digital representations containing information not present in the original photographs, examined either alone or sequentially.

The most mature and widely adopted technique for art conservation and research is Reflectance Transformation Imaging. RTI creates digital representations from image sequences where light is projected from different directions. All the lighting information from this image set is mathematically synthesized into an RTI image, enabling a user to interactively re-light and enhance the subject's surface in incredible detail.

The talk will examine how these empirical acquisition technologies can generate scientifically reliable digital representations that enable future reuse for novel purposes, assist the long-term digital preservation of the digital representation, aid the physical conservation of the digitally represented museum materials, and enable public access and research.

Speaker bio:
Carla Schroer is director and co-founder of Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI) a California non-profit corporation founded in 2002. Carla leads the training programs at CHI, as well as working on field capture projects with Reflectance Transformation Imaging and related computational photography techniques. Carla also directs the software development and testing activities at CHI. She spent 20 years in the commercial software industry, directing a wide range of software development projects including Sun Microsystems’ Java technology, object oriented development tools, and desktop publishing software. In addition, Carla has extensive experience in software licensing and open source projects in both the commercial and non-profit sectors.