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Gigapixel Studio and viewer

Gigapixel photography records the surface of a work in overlapping high-resolution cells and merges them into a single plate of billions of pixels: the whole painting in one image, and in the same image the craquelure, the weave, the single hair of the brush. In the Hub, Gigapixel Studio governs the passage from captured cells to finished plate, and the Gigapixel viewer opens that plate to anyone you choose, on any device.

Gigapixel Studio

Acquisitions > Gigapixel Studio lists every gigapixel capture of the institution, from freshly delivered (raw cells) to finalized (plate ready). Each capture is tied to its work in the Catalog.

Opening a capture enters the workbench, which proceeds as a conservator would want it to: deliberately, and with color first.

  1. Collect. Review the delivered cells, the overview shot and the ColorChecker reference of the session.
  2. Calibrate. The color profile is built from the ColorChecker capture, so the entire plate answers to a measured standard, not to taste.
  3. Align. Neighbouring cells are aligned automatically; a control-point editor allows fine correction where the surface demands it, with a preview of the adjustment.
  4. Refine. Capture sharpening is weighed cell by cell; candidates are compared and the best retained.
  5. Preview. The assembled plate is inspected before anything is committed.
  6. Stitch. The final merge runs on the worker network and produces a 16-bit master TIFF, the archival plate, together with the tiled version the viewer streams. Publication is automatic.

Where a finished plate was produced elsewhere, it can be deposited directly as a TIFF.

The Gigapixel viewer

The viewer streams only the tiles for the region and magnification you are looking at, which is why a plate of a hundred gigapixels moves fluidly on any device, phones included. You travel continuously from the whole composition to the craquelure, as if walking toward the painting without ever being asked to stop. Freshly stitched plates open in a streamed mode even before their tiles are fully prepared.

The Gigapixel Gallery in the sidebar gathers the published plates of the institution, each leading back to its work in the Catalog, beside the 3D form and the spectral layers of the same piece.