I have nearly completed the scanning process and have begun processing the images. The Wildflower Center wants to publish the images in four different sizes: 640 x 480, 320 x 240, 160 x 120, and 80 x 60. This means I have to convert each tiff to a jpeg and then size the jpegs four different times, saving each resized image in a different folder. I also reorient the pictures as necessary and do a minor amount of photo retouching, which usually includes readjusting the image to Photoshop's auto levels and marginally altering the brightness, contrast, and color saturation levels. This is a time-consuming process, as each photo must be retouched individually. The conversion and resizing of the images, however, can be completed in batches. I used the Action tool in Photoshop to record each of these processes, and I have been running the photos through each step 100 at a time.
As far as scanning goes, I have just one binder left, and as this binder appears to be primarily duplicates, I plan to save this until the end, when I am even more familiar with the images in this collection
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Scanning
Last Thursday I started the scanning process for the first binder of slides. This involves using the Wildflower Center's slide scanner, which can hold about 50 slides at once, but scans at a rate of 1-2 minutes per slide. To prepare for scanning, I marked each slide with a yellow dot in the top right corner, so that I could easily put each slide back in its place without having to hold the slide up to the light to determine its orientation. I also wrote the slide label number on each slide pocket so that, when returning the slides to the binder, there would be no confusion about which slide belonged in which pocket.
The scanning process was extremely slow, partly because of the speed of the scanner and partly because the scanner jammed frequently. On the first day of scanning, I was only able to complete 150 slides. While the slides were being scanned, I worked on transposing the metadata from the slide sheets and the slides themselves (many were labeled with location, date, or other information) into the spreadsheet that I created last Tuesday. In addition to the required fields that I had created the spreadsheet with, I added fields for location (e.g., garden or property name) and location notes (i.e., any further information related to location that was written on the slide sheet or on the slide itself), as well as date.
So far, I have finished scanning the first binder and organizing the first two binders and part of the third. At this point, there are a little more than 400 distinct slides that need to be added to the database.
The scanning process was extremely slow, partly because of the speed of the scanner and partly because the scanner jammed frequently. On the first day of scanning, I was only able to complete 150 slides. While the slides were being scanned, I worked on transposing the metadata from the slide sheets and the slides themselves (many were labeled with location, date, or other information) into the spreadsheet that I created last Tuesday. In addition to the required fields that I had created the spreadsheet with, I added fields for location (e.g., garden or property name) and location notes (i.e., any further information related to location that was written on the slide sheet or on the slide itself), as well as date.
So far, I have finished scanning the first binder and organizing the first two binders and part of the third. At this point, there are a little more than 400 distinct slides that need to be added to the database.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
First Day
Yesterday marked the first day of work for me at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I will be spending two days per week there until my capstone project is completed. At the end of this project, I will have uploaded all of the Wasowski Native Texas Landscape slides to the Wildflower Center's image database, and each image will be accompanied by appropriate metadata.
The Wildflower Center already has an extensive image collection on their website, and for the most part, I will be following the process that they have already tested and agreed upon to complete this project. However, as the Wasowski slides are the first landscape images that the Wildflower Center has acquired, I will be expected to tweak this process to meet my needs and to offer suggestions for improvements that could be made to the process and, in particular, the types of metadata collected.
Melissa, the Wildflower Center's librarian and my field supervisor, having been through this process before, suggested that it would be easier for me to determine an appropriate organization scheme for the images before attempting to scan them. To this end, I spent my first day familiarizing myself with the contents of the four large binders that currently house the slides; developing an organization scheme; and numbering, labeling, and physically rearranging the slides. Melissa left all decisions about how to organize the slides up to me.
There are an estimated 1,700 slides in this collection; however, as I discovered yesterday, nearly two thirds of them appear to be duplicates or near duplicates. In order to make the scanning process as efficient as possible, I elected to remove all duplicates from the original binders and organize them into new binders. Each duplicate was labeled with the number of the slide that it is a copy of. Near duplicates were were labeled with the same number along with an additional identifying character (i.e., a, b, c, etc.) to indicate that, although they were too similar to another slide to be included in the collection, they were in fact distinct images.
Because of the large amount of slides in the collection, as well as the number of duplicates that needed to be verified and organized independently of the originals, I was only able to organize one of the binders yesterday. At the end of the day, I created a spreadsheet to track some of the information about the slides I had already organized (i.e., slide number, file name, orientation, collection, and photographers). My next step will be to scan the slides I have now organized.
The Wildflower Center already has an extensive image collection on their website, and for the most part, I will be following the process that they have already tested and agreed upon to complete this project. However, as the Wasowski slides are the first landscape images that the Wildflower Center has acquired, I will be expected to tweak this process to meet my needs and to offer suggestions for improvements that could be made to the process and, in particular, the types of metadata collected.
Melissa, the Wildflower Center's librarian and my field supervisor, having been through this process before, suggested that it would be easier for me to determine an appropriate organization scheme for the images before attempting to scan them. To this end, I spent my first day familiarizing myself with the contents of the four large binders that currently house the slides; developing an organization scheme; and numbering, labeling, and physically rearranging the slides. Melissa left all decisions about how to organize the slides up to me.
There are an estimated 1,700 slides in this collection; however, as I discovered yesterday, nearly two thirds of them appear to be duplicates or near duplicates. In order to make the scanning process as efficient as possible, I elected to remove all duplicates from the original binders and organize them into new binders. Each duplicate was labeled with the number of the slide that it is a copy of. Near duplicates were were labeled with the same number along with an additional identifying character (i.e., a, b, c, etc.) to indicate that, although they were too similar to another slide to be included in the collection, they were in fact distinct images.
Because of the large amount of slides in the collection, as well as the number of duplicates that needed to be verified and organized independently of the originals, I was only able to organize one of the binders yesterday. At the end of the day, I created a spreadsheet to track some of the information about the slides I had already organized (i.e., slide number, file name, orientation, collection, and photographers). My next step will be to scan the slides I have now organized.
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