-------On August 30, 1995, Jonathan Franklin wrote:------
>This discussion seems to be similar to the one that erupted when coffee
>table books arrived and museums were concerned about declining
>attendance. Even images at full 640x480/24-bit color are low-res
>compared to printing, but they take forever to load and look good (given
>the luminosity of the screen). Other than the screen saver market, there
>is little even the highest quality image meant for viewing (rather than
>downloading) can be "used" for.
- Jonathan Franklin
I would like to comment on Jonathan Franklin's post on the
thread of *security of images on WWW*, which has now evolved to
other issues. I would especially like to address his
comparisons between digital images and printed image quality.
In the context of images on the Internet, Jonathan is quite
right. But museum imaging applications are not restricted to
the Internet, despite the fact discussion always seems to
creep back to the Internet. I would like to speak to other
imaging applications that have far greater potential for
delivering quality images. None of the following should be
taken as correcting or criticizing Jonathan's comments.
In the world of professional digital imaging, a 640x480/24-bit
file is very small and pales in comparison to print. The 5,000
high resolution image files in our Frank Lloyd Wright
electronic publication, distributed by Oxford, are more than 5
times larger than a 640x480/24-bit file. And these published
images are derived from archive digital image files nearly 82 times
larger than a 640x480/24-bit file. (The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
received all of these files as part of the publication effort,
5,000 of them; the second volume is in production).
We believe the digital images in our publication compare
favorably with the best full-page plates in a book. And the amount
of visual information in the archive digital image files at the
FLW Foundation far exceeds that of the finest printed page.
It is true that it takes a huge digital file to create a
printed page, but that does not mean the printed page holds all
of that visual information. The reason print requires such
high quality is that it is so inefficient. You start with a
4x5 transparency that holds a huge amount of visual information
and end up with a nice color plate that contains only a
small fraction of the visual information that is in the
transparency. Compare that printed page to a 72MB digital file
of the transparency and the amount of visual information lost
in print is evident.
Are retrieval times slow for these huge files? Yes. But if
microprocessor speed doubles every 18 months, the technology
will catch up to the amount of visual content available. In
the Frank Lloyd Wright publication we provide 4 resolutions of
each image, so access to lower resolution images is very fast.
And this discussion doesn't even touch on the issue of the
economics of reproducing 5,000 architectural drawings in color
in print, or the power of searching and retrieving automated
documentation.
What one sees in consumer multimedia and, especially, on the
Internet misrepresents the level of image quality and promise
digital imaging can deliver.
Thanks for the use of the soapbox.
Best wishes,
Kevin
-------------------------------------
Kevin Donovan
Director of Special Projects
Luna Imaging, Inc.
1315 Innes Place
Venice, CA 90291
ph: 310.452.8370
fx: 310.452.8389
e-mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
08/31/95
12:48:11
-------------------------------------
|