Introducing
DT Fusion
Improved Color for Any Camera. Simply.
DT Fusion
Improved Color for Any Camera. Simply.
DT Fusion is a revolutionary new feature that easily and instantly doubles the color accuracy of most modern cameras. Simply click a button and within 2 seconds* DT Fusion captures a standard 16-bit TIFF with significantly more accurate color. This is an easy drop-in replacement for your reflective or transmissive digitization process, and does not require any special expertise or filter wheels.
*With a DT Phase One iXH 150mp camera, shutter speed of 1/30th, and IIQL 16 Bit format with Standard Readout measured from the start of one Fusion capture until triggering a subsequent capture. The exact time depends on the camera model being used, shutter speed, and camera-specific settings like bit depth and readout mode. For cameras other than the iXH, typical capture times will be in the 3 to 4 second range.
What DT Fusion Does
Improved color accuracy – especially with hard to capture “outlier” colors
Cuts DeltaE in half
Easy, single-click capture
No change in your digitization process or workflow
Fast—made for high-volume production
Compatible with nearly any camera and lens
Works with both reflective and transmissive material
No filter wheels!
What is DT Fusion?
More Accurate Color for Any Camera
To put it simply, a Fusion capture has more accurate color compared to a well-profiled white-light capture with the same camera. DT Fusion leverages the simple first-principles approach of matrix profiling. but vastly improves the accuracy of that method by providing six channels of data rather than three without changing the capture process, adding additional manual steps, or requiring special cameras, lenses, or filter wheels.
This comparison shows the more accurate color captured with DT Fusion.
No More Problematic Material
In most cases using DT Fusion will double the color accuracy of any material*, but the color of problematic material is improved even more. This is important because in the real world it’s the outliers that stick out. If you capture Van Gogh’s Starry Night with a system that struggles with its specific yellow paint, that color error will be immediately noticeable, even if the average color performance of that system is exceptional. Fusion was made to address this exact problem.
The Same Digitization Process. Better Results.
Single-click Instant Capture
While the underlying color science is complex, using DT Fusion is simple – a single click is all it takes. The software triggers back-to-back captures (one white-light capture and one sapphire-light capture with DT Stellar’s unique LED lighting panel) and automatically combines them into a 16-bit TIFF. You can then trigger another Fusion capture immediately without waiting for the first TIFF to be generated. That allows for more than 20 capture cycles per minute (if you can move the material you’re capturing that quickly).
This means running a station with DT Fusion is no more complicated than doing standard captures. The software and workflow are the same, and switching between Fusion and Standard modes requires only a single click. This is in stark contrast to existing complex multispectral systems—the only other methodology that comes close to this level of color accuracy.
Made for High-volume
Fusion is not only compatible with high-volume production, it was designed for it. In fact, high-productivity was a core requirement from our first Fusion client, the Library of Congress, who purchased and tested the system before it was publicly announced.
For institutions that digitize a range of materials, each station can enable Fusion for collections that are color-critical (rare books, paintings, natural history specimens, film, etc) and disable it for collections that aren’t. The DT Stellar is already a best-in-class white light source (98 CRI, 98 CQS, 98 TM30-15), offering excellent color quality without Fusion and the best-available-anywhere color quality with it.
How it Works
Human Eyes vs. Camera Sensors
Camera makers have spent more than a hundred years trying to make a camera that sees color the same way human eyes do. The problem is the filters in modern cameras aren’t sensitive to the same parts of the electromagnetic spectrum as our eyes. We can mostly compensate for that through color profiling, and the results are generally pretty good…but they’re not perfect.
This example shows the difference in color accuracy with normal color profiling vs. a DT Fusion capture. The car’s highlights shows a significantly more green hue without the extra channel information Fusion offers.
Problematic Material
As anyone who has run a museum or library digitization program will tell you, there are a wide range of materials that are impossible to capture accurately using the standard color profiling method. To address this fundamental problem, the DT Fusion doubles the number of color channels the camera records by capturing one image with standard white light and one image with a Sapphire-colored light that fills in the spectral “blind-spots” of the camera’s native sensitivity. The end result is a standard 16-bit RGB TIFF, but with significantly improved color accuracy that is closer to what our eyes and brain perceive.
The Leading Experts Behind DT Fusion
Advancing Color Science
To innovate this incredible step forward in color accuray, DT partnered with Dr. Roy Berns and Dr. David Wyble of Gray Sky Imaging to develop DT Fusion.
The idea of two-capture 6-channel imaging is the brainchild of Dr. Roy Berns, professor Emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) where he was the Director of the Munsell Color Science Laboratory. When it comes to color in a museum/library/archive context he literally wrote the book, and is widely considered the foremost living expert on color science.
Dr. David Wyble is a color scientist and leading expert in the field of color metrology (the measurement of color), and is a frequent consultant to the Library of Congress. He is also the lead scientist behind our DT NGTv2 color target.
All work on DT Fusion has been thoroughly tested and vetted by Gray Sky Imaging and further validated by the Library of Congress who purchased a DT Fusion system in 2022 and performed extensive acceptance testing prior to the public announcement of the product.
Celebrating 20 Years of Digitization Excellence - 2003-2023
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