Solutions for
Oversized Materials
Image Courtesy of the Minneapolis Museum of Art
DT Heritage
Industry-Leading Solutions
Shooting oversized materials is especially demanding, as large items such as wall-sized murals or large maps challenge resolution requirements. Digitizing such collections requires a solution that delivers conservation handling, preservation image quality, production speed, and extensive flexibility. DT has several systems that meet these demands and are ideal for digitizing oversized materials.
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Why Digitization?
Do it once. Do it right.
With the technology, expertise and services offered by DT Heritage, it is possible to create a very high-quality digital mirror of your original assets, creating an immediately accessible digital archive.
DT Heritage
Conservation Handling
With the technology, expertise and services offered by DT Heritage, it is possible to create a very high-quality digital mirror of your original assets, creating an immediately accessible digital archive. This opens the door for marketers, advertisers, sponsors, broadcasters, production companies, and many others to leverage these “newfound” items to the benefit of your organization.
Preservation Quality
DT solutions exceed FADGI 4-Star, ISO 19264, and Metamorfoze-Strict standards. At the heart of all of our systems are our purpose-built cameras offering up to 150mp of resolution at 16-bits of color depth. Coupled with cultural-heritage LED illumination (high CRI, high CQS, and smooth spectral shape), high-resolution lenses, and ultra-low vibration shutters this results in true Preservation Digital Objects with accurate color, tone, and detail. Many manufacturers claim their equipment attains FADGI 4-star or ISO ISO 19264-1 A-class quality but very few others do.
Our raw processing software, with its class-leading debayering algorithm, extracts pixel-level detail and color accuracy previously only seen in cumbersome multi-shot systems.
Production Speed
Typically there is a lower volume when digitizing oversized collections. However, a faster and more efficient workflow can still save hours of time and should not be discounted. DTDCH solutions are designed to deliver a faster workflow in both the capture and post-processing stages.
Capture Stage
Our systems capture nearly instantly (e.g. 1/60th sec) and display almost immediately. In Capture One CH tools such as Focus Mask and Multiple Focus Checking Points can be used to quickly evaluate focus. Other tools, like Overlay, are invaluable at allowing precise and consistent alignment during stitching. Fully integrated live view allows an easy preview of the capture in real time.
Post-Processing Stage
Most digitization software looks like it was developed in the 1990s, because most of it was. Capture One CH is a modern solution built on the venerable and widely used Capture One software. It is designed for cultural heritage workflows, supports all modern operating systems, is frequently updated, and can handle massive numbers of files with ease. Checking focus, zooming in on high resolution images, and scrolling through pages for quality control is lightning fast.
Capture One CH is ideal for digitizing oversized material with tools such as Even Fielding (LCC), Batch Processing, LAB Support, Resolution Ruler, Raw-Stage Quality Control, and Stitching Scripts. These tools enable the automation of tedious post-production tasks that are inherent to the post-processing stage of digitizing oversized objects.
DT BatchStitch is a free open-source tool provided by DT for automatically stitching tiled captures together. This tool provides both batch operation (so that the user only has to click once to process dozens or even thousands of stitched objects) and a QC enhancement that allows an operator to check the results of the stitch with better speed and accuracy.
Extensive Flexibility
The encyclopedic collections of cultural heritage institutions are rarely homogenous. Our systems are versatile, interoperable, and modularly upgradeable to ensure you’re not stuck with a limited tool box. They are also flexible in their use, allowing techniques that are impossible with other systems.
Interoperable and Modularly Upgradable
Typically, our solution for digitizing oversized materials comprise a Phase One XF body and Phase One digital back. These components are highly interoperable with the rest of our product line. For instance, an institution that purchased an [DT Versa + Phase One XF + Phase One IQ4 150] for scanning newspapers would only need to add a wall mount to digitize oversized materials.
Limitless Size
The DT Versa and DT Element have columns that can be remounted from their usual position (suspending the camera over the waist-high working surface) to face backward. This allows capture of material at floor level of up to 50” x 70” in a single capture, up to 90” x 120” in two captures, and any panoramic material of any length (up to 90” wide) using stitching.
Rolling Capture
Some oversized collections are stored in rolled form, and often unwise or impractical to unroll the entirety of the material at once. In such cases DT systems can be used to capture segments of the material and stitch them together. This solution works especially well with our systems because we maintain such high pixel sharpness throughout the frame; the sharper the detail the better stitching software can combine the segments without artifact.
National Archives and Records Administration
Industry-leading
Imaging Technology
We can digitize anything at a level of detail you can’t get anywhere else. You have to see it to believe it. Check out our product videos to see the equipment in action.
DT Titan
Meet the DT Titan, the largest modern copy stand. Digitizing large material presents a unique challenge to most typical copy stands. From historical maps and oversized artworks to textiles and elephant folios, finding a surface to support the subject, as well as getting the entire piece in the image sensor’s field of view, can be a struggle. With those specific needs in mind, DT has created our largest digitization system – the DT Titan
DT Versa
Meet the DT Versa, our solution designed for the digitization of all kinds of collections. The stand, camera, and column seamlessly integrate with our software for fast and easy preservation-grade digitization. The Versa allows digitization with or without glass contact. With the Versa hardtop in place, all scanning is done 100% contact-free. Removing that hardtop reveals a conservation-friendly glass top with a user-settable maximum and with such precise control of the object that the operator can raise the object to lightly kiss the glass.
DT Element
Meet the DT Element, it’s more than a copy stand – a complete digitization platform. The stand, camera, and column tightly integrate with our software for fast and easy preservation-grade digitization. Our DT Element complies with FADGI 4-star, Metamorfoze Strict, ISO 19264 image quality, and JHOVE file format standards.
Celebrating 20 Years of Digitization Excellence - 2003-2023
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