Benchmarking Art Image Interchange Cycles

Many cultural heritage institutions are currently spending significant resources photographing their works of art for a variety of applications with distinctly different requirements. To create reproductions of their artwork, cultural heritage institutions employ a range of technology and a variety of workflows. A similar variety is used to publish these images in a number of output media. This project was undertaken to explore these workflows, their requirements, and the resulting image quality of the reproductions produced. The main goals of this project were to: (1) determine the image quality inherent in the art image interchange cycles in use today, (2) understand the image quality expectations of the users, and (3) develop the capability to tie the two together. The three-year project started in April 2008 with financial support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.