4 ms·

Adobe Photoshop and 1700s Manuscripts: A New Approach to Digital Paleography

33 points by benbreen 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tdumitrescu 11y ago
Humanities scholars tend to stay very isolated within their fields. The Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music has been using these exact techniques since the 90s, and even published a "workbook" on it: http://www.diamm.ac.uk/publications/digital-restoration-workbook/ http://www.diamm.ac.uk/publications/digital-restoration-work...
- igravious 11y ago
  A recent TED talk by Gregory Heyworth on using spectral imaging to reveal the hidden (to our eyes) content of ancient manuscripts. I don't usually watch TED talks any more but this one has a fair bit of meat and I found it genuinely inspiring. http://www.ted.com/talks/gregory_heyworth_how_i_m_discovering_the_secrets_of_ancient_texts http://www.ted.com/talks/gregory_heyworth_how_i_m_discoverin... What does it even mean to say that humanities scholars tend to stay very isolated. How would you even measure that? And as compared to what?
  - tdumitrescu 11y ago
    I mean that, e.g., recent paleographical work which medieval music specialists have done on the sources which interest them has been more or less invisible to scholars of literature, history of science, etc., and vice versa. Even when they overlap almost exactly, as in this case. By recent I mean the last 2-3 decades, not like this past year.
    - igravious 11y ago
      I get what you mean. The point is that if this work is applicable to a wider audience then why not get it in front of those eyeballs by publishing in a place where multiple disciplines congregate? This is the point of the Humanist[0] mailing list, for instance -- in the case of humanities computing applications. [0] http://dhhumanist.org/ http://dhhumanist.org/
nathancahill 11y ago
Cute. The screenshots really make it.
metaphor 11y ago
Maybe I'm too cynical, but my initial instincts suggest this paper is a direct by-product of the academic "publish or perish" paradigm.
sjwright 11y ago
Is this an old article? They're using a version of Adobe Photoshop released in 2003. (Version 8; the current version is 16.1)
- Jerry2 11y ago
  He's using PS CS2 which was released by Adobe for free [0]. For what he's using PS for, CS2 is more than adequate. And you can't beat the price. He could also use GIMP for all those steps as well. [0] http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-get-photoshop-for-free/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-get-photoshop-...
  - zokier 11y ago
    No, CS2 has not been released for free. The activation-free downloads were offered to support existing legitimate CS2 licensees. http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2013/01/07/download-adobe-cs2-applications-for-free/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2013/01/07/...
igravious 11y ago
Oh hey. Cool! My area. (digital humanities) Nice to see it hit the front page of HN. For anyone who hasn't heard of it yet, the digital humanities (DH) is humanities 2.0. It is an evolving area of research that uses computational methods to explore and answer traditional humanities research questions. When I say humanities, I'm assuming you know I'm simultaneously talking about arts, as in the A in BA, MA, and so on :) Digital humanities[1] is actually a re-branding of what is known as _humanities computing_[2] which is arguably a more accurate term mirroring as it does the term _scientific computing_[3]. DH covers things like digital archiving, using GIS in archaeology, using computational linguistics in the service literary criticism, stylometrics, applied ontology, digital metadata standards, and much much more. A good journal to start with is Digital Scholarship in the Humanities: http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/ http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/ and the main umbrella conference this year is in Jagiellonian university in Kraków, Poland -- one of the oldest universities in the world, operational since 1364! http://dh2016.adho.org/ http://dh2016.adho.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/humanities_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/humanities_computing (redirects to DH) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scientific_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scientific_computing (redirects to computational science)
xufi 11y ago
Awesome to see how PS can preserve stuff like this. I plan to do this for some older texts I have around .
rickdale 11y ago
Photoshop is awesome for stuff like this, and its so simple. I had this picture of my dad sitting on a tank in the middle of the middle east, but you couldn't see him and it was really faded. I googled how to restore it in photoshop, and it took me less than 5 minutes. All the sudden there is this clear detailed face and you can see my dad is there smoking a cigarette as usual. My dad died young almost 15 years ago and restoring that image meant a lot to my uncle as well as the rest of my family. When I first got the picture my mind was thinking, I wish I knew a professional that could restore it. But all you really need is the software and google..

33 points by benbreen 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Humanities scholars tend to stay very isolated within their fields. The Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music has been using these exact techniques since the 90s, and even published a "workbook" on it: http://www.diamm.ac.uk/publications/digital-restoration-workbook/ http://www.diamm.ac.uk/publications/digital-restoration-work...

igravious 11y ago
A recent TED talk by Gregory Heyworth on using spectral imaging to reveal the hidden (to our eyes) content of ancient manuscripts. I don't usually watch TED talks any more but this one has a fair bit of meat and I found it genuinely inspiring. http://www.ted.com/talks/gregory_heyworth_how_i_m_discovering_the_secrets_of_ancient_texts http://www.ted.com/talks/gregory_heyworth_how_i_m_discoverin... What does it even mean to say that humanities scholars tend to stay very isolated. How would you even measure that? And as compared to what?
- tdumitrescu 11y ago
  I mean that, e.g., recent paleographical work which medieval music specialists have done on the sources which interest them has been more or less invisible to scholars of literature, history of science, etc., and vice versa. Even when they overlap almost exactly, as in this case. By recent I mean the last 2-3 decades, not like this past year.
  - igravious 11y ago
    I get what you mean. The point is that if this work is applicable to a wider audience then why not get it in front of those eyeballs by publishing in a place where multiple disciplines congregate? This is the point of the Humanist[0] mailing list, for instance -- in the case of humanities computing applications. [0] http://dhhumanist.org/ http://dhhumanist.org/

nathancahill 11y ago

Cute. The screenshots really make it.

metaphor 11y ago

Maybe I'm too cynical, but my initial instincts suggest this paper is a direct by-product of the academic "publish or perish" paradigm.

sjwright 11y ago

Is this an old article? They're using a version of Adobe Photoshop released in 2003. (Version 8; the current version is 16.1)

Jerry2 11y ago
He's using PS CS2 which was released by Adobe for free [0]. For what he's using PS for, CS2 is more than adequate. And you can't beat the price. He could also use GIMP for all those steps as well. [0] http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-get-photoshop-for-free/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-get-photoshop-...
- zokier 11y ago
  No, CS2 has not been released for free. The activation-free downloads were offered to support existing legitimate CS2 licensees. http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2013/01/07/download-adobe-cs2-applications-for-free/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2013/01/07/...

igravious 11y ago

Oh hey. Cool! My area. (digital humanities) Nice to see it hit the front page of HN. For anyone who hasn't heard of it yet, the digital humanities (DH) is humanities 2.0. It is an evolving area of research that uses computational methods to explore and answer traditional humanities research questions. When I say humanities, I'm assuming you know I'm simultaneously talking about arts, as in the A in BA, MA, and so on :) Digital humanities[1] is actually a re-branding of what is known as _humanities computing_[2] which is arguably a more accurate term mirroring as it does the term _scientific computing_[3]. DH covers things like digital archiving, using GIS in archaeology, using computational linguistics in the service literary criticism, stylometrics, applied ontology, digital metadata standards, and much much more. A good journal to start with is Digital Scholarship in the Humanities: http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/ http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/ and the main umbrella conference this year is in Jagiellonian university in Kraków, Poland -- one of the oldest universities in the world, operational since 1364! http://dh2016.adho.org/ http://dh2016.adho.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_humanities [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/humanities_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/humanities_computing (redirects to DH) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scientific_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scientific_computing (redirects to computational science)

xufi 11y ago

Awesome to see how PS can preserve stuff like this. I plan to do this for some older texts I have around .

rickdale 11y ago

Photoshop is awesome for stuff like this, and its so simple. I had this picture of my dad sitting on a tank in the middle of the middle east, but you couldn't see him and it was really faded. I googled how to restore it in photoshop, and it took me less than 5 minutes. All the sudden there is this clear detailed face and you can see my dad is there smoking a cigarette as usual. My dad died young almost 15 years ago and restoring that image meant a lot to my uncle as well as the rest of my family. When I first got the picture my mind was thinking, I wish I knew a professional that could restore it. But all you really need is the software and google..