I've uploaded "renascence-small.jpg" to the Files area. I would have
put it on burlingtonroute.com, but I see no provision for actually
uploading there.
With Gerald Edgar's help, I'm working on producing a good-quality scan
of the calendar top, for 1)archiving the image and 2) hopefully to
help facilitate a BRHS poster. I know several people have expressed
an interest, and I have a great interest, but we need to start with a
good digital image in any case.
This reduced jpg is 1390 x 1327 pixels and isn't color-corrected. The
hand-editing of wrinkles and tears on the image and border aren't the
best either, but this is just a trial image. This is a 1/10 size
image of what the 600dpi will be.
I've made trial 600dpi scans of Renascence and an IT8 calibration
target using a Microtek 9800XL scanner, but the scans are not optimum.
The original is spray-mounted to a cardboard backing, also taped with
masking tape around the edges. It has delaminated and "bubbled" in
several places, so I could not hold it flat on the scanner platen.
This weekend, I will make a first attempt at removing the print from
the backing. In reading on document conservation websites and talking
to several people, Bestine solvent (mostly hexane) is the gentlest
solvent to use, and should not damage the print itself. The masking
tape is yielding to naptha (the most-recommended solvent) but both
solvents leave a slight water-stain effect on the border paper. I
think that it might be that the paper is very old and dry and the
solvents are not evaporating fully. The border is colored (where
there are tears the inner fibers of the paper are much lighter) but
neither solvent is actually causing any ink bleeding. I think that,
by painting the full print with the Bestine to release it from the
cardboard, the waterstain effect will be uniform over the whole image.
I have 48-bit scans of "dry" and "waterstained" areas of the border
area, so I can compensate for any color variation later. My main goal
is to be able to press the print firmly and evenly down on the scanner
platen to get a good, undistorted series of scans.
A further problem in my trial image stitching (due to the print's size
I had to scan it in six sections, even on a 12x17" scanner) is that
the 600dpi image is too large to stitch with my current software.
Windows 2000 has a memory limitation of 2GB (physical and swapfile)
available to any single application, and during stitching I run into
"out of memory" errors. There are many temporary files open during
the stitching, because the 600dpi Renascense scan should only be 184MB
when finished.
My favorite stitching program is an old freeware version of Panorama
Factory, but I have also tried hand-stitching the image using Picture
Window Pro. I am looking for a program that can do the stitching in
sections, so the whole image doesn't have to be in memory at the same
time. Helmut Dursch's Panorama Tools with Max Lyons' PTAssembler
front end ( http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm ) looks promising
because Mr. Lyons has assembled a 1 gigapixel image using them.
If anyone has large image stitching experience, I'll appreciate
hearing from you. I'm also somewhat of a newbie at image editing for
printing, so if anyone has experience in that area I'd also like to
correspond with you.
Best regards,
Randy
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