I am looking for a simple solution to take pictures of paintings for an online Art gallery. It will be used indoor only and always at the same place. I cannot use a scanner because of the paintings sizes (up to 21x33") Basically, I could probably use a digital still camera directly plugged to a computer and shot directly the pictures from a software like PaintShop Pro. Color matching is crucial, resolution is not and bitmaps sizes have to be small for the web. I am not a photography expert, I would greatly appreciate any simple advises on the type of camera I should use as well as any other tips. I am also wondering what kind of artificial light I could use so that it does not change the original colors?

Thank you in advance and my apologies for my frenchy English...

-- Alain Balon (adf@best.com), October 30, 1998

Answers

There *are* scanners out there with 24"x36" flatbeds, such as the one from Tangent Imaging Systems (http://www.colorscan.com). Otherwise you should be able to get okay results from a digital camera, and since you plan to publish on the web I suppose the lossy compression will cover any problems anyway...

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-- Neil Okamoto (nokamoto@anim.dreamworks.com), October 30, 1998.

Actually any good digital camera with a flash and good resolution will do the trick. With the proper software..u can crop it to cover the painting perfectly. And with the sofware..u can adjust the color tones. There are many cheap good software to do these things.. I am not too familar with Paint Shop..it may do these things. Others like picture it!..photodeluxe..thumbsplus from cerious.com are some. The flas on the camer should be ok..but try to avoid halogen and floursent lighting. Take care

-- Mike Valley (cpanthers@email.com), November 05, 1998.

Neil, Mike,

Thank you very much for your precious advices! I guess I am going now to look for a digital camera. Scanners with wide scan areas would be great too.. but they don't fit my budget.

Thanks, Alain

-- Alain Balon (adf@best.com), November 05, 1998.

Alain- For color control, very important to have well-controlled white, black, and midtone points. Get a MacBeth "ColorChecker" if they sell them in your country, or just a reasonable-sized gray scale. The software I know best is Photoshop, and the trick there is the "levels" control. Use the separate red, green, and blue sliders to set the levels for each channel so that the darkest black is neutral (eg, all three channels go exactly to zero), and so that the whitest white is neutral also (eg, all three channels go to ~250 or so). Then, use the midtone "eyedropper" to click on the midtone gray step, and it will set the "gamma" of all three channels to give you neutral greys. Various cameras are better/worse at various parts of the color spectrum, but just fixing the white/black/midtone points makes an amazing improvement in most. Another alternative if your budget permits is a higher-end studio camera that includes "color management" software. I'm a little rusty on the players there, but know that Agfa has good color-management technology.

Hope this helps, good luck!

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), November 05, 1998.

ANOTHER WAY TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF THE PICTURES EVEN IN POOR NATURAL LIGHTING IS TO USE WHITE SHEETS OR SCREENS AND POINT THE LIGHTS TOWARD THE SCREENS AND LET THAT REFLECT THE LIGHT AND NOT THE FLASH. ALSO PUT A DARK SCREEN DIRECTLY BEHIND YOU TO KEEP THE GLASS ON THE ARTWORK FROM PICKING UP ANY REFLECTIONS.

-- HOWARD ROGERS (CRYSTAL-RIVER@ATT.NET), December 10, 2002.