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Masterpieces Online — High Culture At High Resolution

Posted by Soulskill on from the extreme-close-up dept.

crimeandpunishment writes "You can now see the finest details of some of the finest Italian masterpieces with just one click of your mouse. High-resolution images of classic paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Botticelli are now online with that opportunity. You can zoom in to the smallest details, even ones you wouldn't see when viewing the paintings in person at a museum. The images have a resolution of up to 28 billion pixels, which is about 3,000 times more than a photo from an average digital camera."

28 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. I Don't See ... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think they missed one. I don't see Dogs Playing Poker. I'm just sayin' ...

    1. Re:I Don't See ... by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not really, it would be better than what we currently have, but prints are barely better than nothing. You can't reproduce with pixels what was created with pigments, it just doesn't work. You cannot currently create an image on a monitor that uses brown. No combination of RBG values will give you brown. You're also not going to be able to appreciate the effect of translucent glazing or the brushwork. Not to mention the monitor calibration and control of the lighting conditions.

      For somebody with no or little knowledge of art, it would be sufficient, but it's really a pale shade of the real thing.

    2. Re:I Don't See ... by Reziac · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The other day I found myself ranting to a friend on that very subject. I'd never really been interested in 1600s-era art based on prints. Once I saw some with my own eyes -- wow, the difference defies description. NO print ever shows even a hint of the depth, glow, and sense of its own reality that you get from seeing these works in person.

      I see we've killed their server so I'll have to wait on seeing what this effort looks like. However, I'm of the opinion that any access is better than NO access (since most of us cannot travel to see all these works in person).

      And as to brown on a monitor... the nearest you can come is actually a sort of grubby purple that fools the eye if you don't look too closely, or lack real brown to compare to. Very irritating (especially when trying to get it visually-right for a client's logo -- all in BROWN!)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    3. Re:I Don't See ... by jack2000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What are you people, colorblind or something? I see a perfect brown on my 21" CRT monitor.

    4. Re:I Don't See ... by Peach+Rings · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Um.

    5. Re:I Don't See ... by Reziac · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I did get it to where it looks good, but it took a lot of swearing. And I'd started with a scan of the original (best copy available -- it was an existing print logo to be used on their website). Had to do a lot of finagling with the tint to get it to where what the eye *sees* on a monitor is the intended shade of brown. On examining it at the pixel level, the reason became clear -- there ain't no such shade as 'brown' in the CRT spectrum.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    6. Re:I Don't See ... by bertok · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I did get it to where it looks good, but it took a lot of swearing. And I'd started with a scan of the original (best copy available -- it was an existing print logo to be used on their website). Had to do a lot of finagling with the tint to get it to where what the eye *sees* on a monitor is the intended shade of brown. On examining it at the pixel level, the reason became clear -- there ain't no such shade as 'brown' in the CRT spectrum.

      There's no such shade as "brown" on the real spectrum. As a graphics designer, I thought you'd understand that.

      Every color other than red, green, or blue will always be a mixture on all monitors at the "pixel" level. Your monitor isn't somehow lying to you, or cheating you out of a real color, it's mixing colors using additive blending, just like it happens in with light in real life as well.

      If it looks the "same" at a distance, than for all practical purposes, it is the same. Putting your nose up to the glass and claiming that it's all "pixelated" - and hence somehow fake - is just stupid.

      For professional work, why don't you get a wide-gamut monitor like the some of the new Dell monitors? They have a narrower color gamut than the human eye, but wider than sRGB, Adobe RGB, and CMYK.

      And unlike your stone-age CRT, an LCD doesn't flicker, has a higher resolution, the pixels are perfectly square, the edge looks just as perfect as the center, and their color calibration drifts less with time. And if you get a matching video card, you can also get 30-bit color (10+10+10), which gives you 1024 shades of each color channel instead of the usual 256. It makes a significant difference when editing images with a lot of shadow detail.

    7. Re:I Don't See ... by Peach+Rings · · Score: 2, Informative

      Real life is usually subtractive color, not additive.

    8. Re:I Don't See ... by Reziac · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, I know there's no such colour as... [insert combo-of-whatevers here] ...but it's still a convenient shorthand for what we SEE. Imagine if these what-we-see colours had no names and you had to refer to each by its numbers!

      As to examining pixels, that's what I wound up doing because the initial brown looked wrong (like it wanted to be a bruised purple instead). There's nothing stupid about taking something down to its component parts to see why it's not working.

      I've seen exactly *one* LCD that I deemed entirely suitable, and the damned thing cost $2200 (and that was at the trade-show discount). A wee ways out of my budget, probably for the next century. -- One of the issues that drives me nuts is that they're sensitive to viewing angle. Not so much from side-to-side anymore but still from up-to-down. So if you don't always slouch at the same height, the image changes. The very expensive one lacked this visual defect.

      And as you note there's the issue of matching the video card to the LCD, notably the resolution. Not an issue with a CRT. I really hate being stuck on someone else's notion of MY ideal resolution, because otherwise the aspect ratio is munged, or it displays interlaced (I've seen both problems).

      I've also found the average LCD's total light output wearing on my eyes.

      I suppose if I was made of money, or doing graphics as a fulltime job, it would be worth whatever investment was required to get it how I want it. As it is, my stone-age solution works better for me, for a fraction of the investment.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    9. Re:I Don't See ... by bertok · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah, I know there's no such colour as... [insert combo-of-whatevers here] ...but it's still a convenient shorthand for what we SEE. Imagine if these what-we-see colours had no names and you had to refer to each by its numbers!

      What you "see" is a combination of colors, essentially red, green, and blue. Technically, natural light is a continuous spectrum of colors with a complex map of varying intensities, but your eyes physically can't sense that. In effect, your eyes have only "blue-yellow" and "green-red" sensors, which are mathematically identical to an additive mixture of red, green, and blue. It's not a cheat, or an over-simplification, monitors are designed to match how humans see. There are lots of limitations to color reproduction, like the color filters not having a truly pure color, which reduces the gamut, but that's improved a lot in recent years. There's no such thing as "brown", really, either on a computer screen, or in the natural world.

      As to examining pixels, that's what I wound up doing because the initial brown looked wrong (like it wanted to be a bruised purple instead). There's nothing stupid about taking something down to its component parts to see why it's not working.

      Did you notice the red-green-blue sliders in the color selection dialog box of your image editor? That's exactly what it does. You don't have to get your face up close to the monitor!

      I've seen exactly *one* LCD that I deemed entirely suitable, and the damned thing cost $2200 (and that was at the trade-show discount). A wee ways out of my budget, probably for the next century.

      For a professional grade monitor, that's cheap. Most graphic artists I know work with $10K+ monitors, like the HP DreamColor range.

      One of the issues that drives me nuts is that they're sensitive to viewing angle. Not so much from side-to-side anymore but still from up-to-down. So if you don't always slouch at the same height, the image changes. The very expensive one lacked this visual defect.

      Mine is perfect within 20 degrees in all directions, and I got it 5 years ago for $1000, delivered. The same 24" model from Dell is about $300 now, I think. Most professionals have switched to LCDs, because the color shifting issues have been fixed on all of the high-end monitors, and they now have better color reproduction overall than CRTs.

      And as you note there's the issue of matching the video card to the LCD, notably the resolution. Not an issue with a CRT. I really hate being stuck on someone else's notion of MY ideal resolution, because otherwise the aspect ratio is munged, or it displays interlaced (I've seen both problems).

      If your video card can't handle 2D at common display resolutions, you seriously need to upgrade. Ancient embedded cards can handle that. I've seen people run 2560x1600 resolutions just fine with a $50 video card.

      I've also found the average LCD's total light output wearing on my eyes.

      They have brightness controls, you know. Mine can give you sunburn if you let it, but I just set it to a moderate level, and it's fine.

      I suppose if I was made of money, or doing graphics as a fulltime job, it would be worth whatever investment was required to get it how I want it. As it is, my stone-age solution works better for me, for a fraction of the investment.

      Zero investment is more like it. You can get a professional-grade monitor for under $1000 if you do you research and find a good deal.

  2. Re:and who said that 10Mpix is more than enough? by hedwards · · Score: 2, Informative

    10Mpix is enough for anybody that is wanting to make an 8x10 print, and by enough, I mean way more than you need, even if you throw away quite a few of the pixels.

    You only need more pixels when you need a larger image and you need to be closer than what the current number allows. A 6mp camera is more than enough for a billboard, where you're expecting to be a hundred feet away or more. Whereas a 20mp camera wouldn't be anywhere near enough if you were expecting to stand 10 feet away.

    But, then again, I know you're making a lame joke based upon something that was originally a misquote, carry on.

  3. Links to the actual images... by iammani · · Score: 4, Informative

    Caravaggio, Bacchus
    Botticelli, The Birth of Venus
    Sandro Botticelli, La Primavera

    1. Re:Links to the actual images... by iammani · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mmm looks like you could open one of the above links and navigate to other images within the flash app.

    2. Re:Links to the actual images... by Trufagus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The link in the summary goes to a page at 'skunkpost' that merely reprints an AP article.

      I don't care about skunkpost or AP, but if it is AP's article then the link should go to the original. Otherwise we will get sites simply reprinting other people's articles and then submitting their reprint to /. etc.

      I realize this problem is as old as the Internet (probably much older) but it would be SO EASY for /. to stop contributing to the problem.

    3. Re:Links to the actual images... by Fearless96 · · Score: 2, Informative

      These, too:

      Verrocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, Battesimo di Cristo
      Leonardo da Vinci, Annunciazione

  4. Note that these images are not... by John+Hasler · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...protected by copyright under USA law. If you are in the USA you are free to download them and share them.

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  5. Re:Another cool site by Andy+Smith · · Score: 3, Informative

    Link is goatse.

    I feel poorly.

  6. Re:Another cool site by Andy+Smith · · Score: 2

    Well done to whoever marked this as troll. I was trying to help!

  7. Poor poor guy who came up with this... by santax · · Score: 2, Funny

    He is probably wondering when he sees the data-costs after getting slashdotted if it wouldn't have been better to just buy a couple more paintings. From Rembrand or something like that.

  8. Re:Yawn... by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's not why I'd even consider going to an art museum. After all, since a lot of those folks don't even allow you to take photographs, if you just want to say you've been, you can just lie about it.

    No, go to an art museum because you might see something interesting, unique, beautiful, or mind-bending. I'm not even very visual myself, but a good art museum's works will draw your eyes right in and convince you to spend a while exploring the details.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  9. The images have logos stamped on them by Animats · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Those images have "Halta Definizione" stamped all over them. But it looks like that's being done client-side; the stamps appear and disappear as you scroll and change resolution. Someone should extract the underlying images and post them to the Wikimedia Commons in PNG format. This is legal; see "Bridgeman vs. Corel".

    1. Re:The images have logos stamped on them by Fred+Foobar · · Score: 2, Informative

      Look at the source code of (for example) http://www.haltadefinizione.com/magnifier.jsp?idopera=10. In there you'll find this code:

      swf.addVariable("xml","/immagini/opere/10/imgfull/properties_krpano.xml");

      That's a relative address—the full URL is http://www.haltadefinizione.com/immagini/opere/10/imgfull/properties_krpano.xml. That file contains stuff like this:

      <image type="CYLINDER" hfov="1.00" multires="true" tilesize="256">
      <level tiledimagewidth="181273" tiledimageheight="113625">
      <cylinder url="venere_krpano/l7_%0v_%0h.jpg" />
      </level>
      ...

      The URL, again, is relative (to the XML file) and points to http://www.haltadefinizione.com/immagini/opere/10/imgfull/venere_krpano/l7_%250v_%250h.jpg, where %0v and %0h are the vertical and horizontal coordinates, respectively. Since this level is 181273 pixels wide and 113625 pixels (taken from the "level" tag), and tiles are 256x256 pixels (taken from the "image" tag), you can grab all images at this level with the fusker string http://www.haltadefinizione.com/immagini/opere/10/imgfull/venere_krpano/l7_[01-444]_[01-709].jpg. Be careful downloading the whole picture at this detail level (7). It's 314,796 tiles! If you just want a wallpaper-sized image for this image, try downloading detail level 1, which is 2833x1776 pixels (84 tiles) (fusker string: http://www.haltadefinizione.com/immagini/opere/10/imgfull/venere_krpano/l1_[01-07]_[01-12].jpg).

      By the way, the watermarks are all embedded directly in the tile sets, unfortunately. They seem to be stamped on every tile whose coordinates modulo 4 are 0, meaning only 1/16 of the images are stamped.

      Happy downloading!

      --
      It was a really good paper.
    2. Re:The images have logos stamped on them by Fred+Foobar · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you do decide to download the full images, keep this in mind: Each tile image is between about 15KB and 50KB or so (let's say 30KB average), so the full detail image consists of roughly 9 gigabytes of JPEG images. Please, everyone, for the sake of their servers don't try to download it all at once! (I would personally try to trickle download it over the course of a week or so to be nice on their servers.)

      --
      It was a really good paper.
  10. Re:and who said that 10Mpix is more than enough? by ffreeloader · · Score: 2, Informative

    I know you're either trolling, or joking, but these images are made by taking an orderly group of images of small parts of the painting by rows and columns to get complete coverage with a professional dslr and good lens, and then stitching the images together with software. There are many, many examples of these types of images out on the internet. You can find pictures of this type of cities, mountains in the Alps, and many other subjects by Googling for giga-pixel images.

    --
    "while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
  11. Re:and who said that 10Mpix is more than enough? by BrokenHalo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You only need more pixels when you need a larger image and you need to be closer than what the current number allows.

    Of course, in a sense, nothing has changed here: back in the day when we all used cellulose film, we all knew that if we wanted an image that needed blowing up to a large size, we needed a larger-format negative. We used to swear by the 6x6 cm "medium" format (e.g. from Hasselblad or Rolleiflex) for quick work, but if we wanted really crisp resolution, we used 5x4" or sometimes 8x10" plates.

    Although I occasionally miss the discipline of black-and-white (always with Ilford film), there's only one thing that has really disappointed me with the move to digital photography: the apparent failure of print media to approximate the luminous colour and definition of Cibachrome (now, I believe, known as Ilfochrome) colour prints created from positive transparencies. Many years ago, I used to do this myself, but now I don't even have a darkroom...

  12. Clunky, why? Deepzoom is open and free too... by TheNetAvenger · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't get the sad Flash UI implemented for viewing the art. Why not just use DeepZoom or a variation to seamlessly zoom and pan the images. (Deepzoom is a MS technology, but it can be used with Silverlight or even generic HTML and is exactly what this company is trying to do.)

    Love the high resolution images and availability; however, using the page UI and how freaking slow the UI is doesn't make a good impression.

  13. Re:Another cool site by Andy+Smith · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well done to whoever marked this as troll. I was trying to be a whiny bitch!

  14. One of these Baroque masters was a Spongebob fan! by markzip · · Score: 2, Funny

    Another direct link: http://www.haltadefinizione.com/magnifier.jsp?idopera=3

    Fans of the Baroque will be aware that Andrea Pozzo is best known for his use of "quadratura", the technique intermixing paintings of architectural details with elements of fancy. What is less well known is that Pozzo was an early admirer of Spongebob Squarepants. One of these amazingly highly detailed pictures shows that his "Gloria di Sant'Ignazio", painted in 1685 for the nave of the church of St. Ignazio in Rome, include a sly tribute to our favourite right-angled undersea dweller. Hit the link and zoom in to the bottom right

    http://www.haltadefinizione.com/magnifier.jsp?idopera=3