Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 88.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 08:43:38 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: image enhancement manual?
I am involved in a project to produce an electronic edition of a single
medieval manuscript. This edition will of course provide high-definition
images of the ms pages. Some of the pages in the manuscript are in poor
condition, with among other things bleed-through of ink from the other side
of the leaf. We anticipate that users of the edition will want digitally to
enhance these pages or parts of them. If "enhancement" were a simple matter
then of course we would provide enhanced images, but it is not. Deformative
play of various sorts, yet to be discovered or problematic but fruitful,
needs to be encouraged. It occurs to me that the best approach would be to
provide in the introductory material to this edition a description of how
particular filters, say in Photoshop, can be used under particular
circumstances to bring out features of an image. I can imagine, for
example, addressing the problem of a word originally written in silver ink
or paint for which the metal has mostly fallen off, leaving small bits
behind. What filter, or what filters used in what sequence with what
settings, would be best to show the remaining metallic bits?
Does such a image-manipulation manual for manuscript scholars exist? If
not, would there be sufficient interest to motivate the collaborative
production of such a manual?
More ambitious would be a project to devise such filters specifically for
the purpose. Has anyone undertaken to do that?
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
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