Endless Remastering
Since personal computers became accessible in the 1980s, almost every type of media that existed up to that point got digitized into formats that can be displayed or played on computers. Technology has been leaping at an accelerated speed, and the demand for old digital files to get re-digitized to an even higher quality is ongoing and constant. An old photographic film that gets scanned and digitized for CRT monitors will eventually need to be re-scanned for higher resolution digital monitors, and then again for HD, then Ultra HD, Retina, 4K, 8K, 16K, 3D, Super Mega Ultra 3D displays, and so on. Just because something gets digitized doesn't necessary mean that its digitizing process will ever be concluded.
As a graphic designer and a digital illustrator, part of my everyday work is digitizing physical media. Illustrations, especially for marketing purposes will eventually need to be printed on grand format banners or displayed on large digital screens so it is crucial that they are digital and future proof. It's always an option to scale down the resolution of an image to fit smaller size formats without sacrificing quality; however, scaling something in lower to higher resolution always will result in pixelation (when a dot or a pixel gets blown up and the characteristics of the pixel, such as hard square edges, become visible to the naked eye). Artists will make any possible effort to digitize works with the highest quality possible, such as scanning at the highest resolution technology at the time allows and with the lowest to no compression whenever possible.
Beyond image resolution improvement overtime, one of the other interesting development is dynamic optimization of something that gets digitized. Let's examine the map of St. Petersburg, for example. We can see how the 1914 map clustered so many new developments compared to the map printed in 1897. As the city grew, the number of point of interests as well as the buildings and transit systems became much more crowded, in a way that the map printed in 1914 was overwhelming to process compared to the map printed 1897, which is much friendlier for the eye to study. These two maps got scanned in slices with very high quality and stitched together, a process that I am sure requires a lot of labor and time; however, technology requires an endless process of remastering. Let's take another look at the map of the same city, St. Petersburg on Google Maps. Although it once got digitized, every road that was once scanned has to be redrawn in vector format so that you can zoom in to the inches and not a single artifact from the old scanned prints can be seen. The same map also got a dynamic optimization transformation where only necessary information will be displayed based on the zoom level. Unlike the map printed in 1914, you are not bombarded and overwhelmed with unnecessary information.
Vectoring is a very labor intensive digitizing process, a technique that modern map businesses have to go through. Unlike scanning, which is digitally capturing pixel per pixel, vectoring requires a complete redraw using lines and polygonal shapes. This process completely eliminates the pixelation problem when the map needs to be scaled. It also allows software to manipulate, change color, turn off or on any of the lines and shapes based on the zoom level; this gives ways for dynamic optimization. Vectoring is a very interesting process and perhaps it could be something I can demonstrate for this course's final project.
As a graphic designer and a digital illustrator, part of my everyday work is digitizing physical media. Illustrations, especially for marketing purposes will eventually need to be printed on grand format banners or displayed on large digital screens so it is crucial that they are digital and future proof. It's always an option to scale down the resolution of an image to fit smaller size formats without sacrificing quality; however, scaling something in lower to higher resolution always will result in pixelation (when a dot or a pixel gets blown up and the characteristics of the pixel, such as hard square edges, become visible to the naked eye). Artists will make any possible effort to digitize works with the highest quality possible, such as scanning at the highest resolution technology at the time allows and with the lowest to no compression whenever possible.
Beyond image resolution improvement overtime, one of the other interesting development is dynamic optimization of something that gets digitized. Let's examine the map of St. Petersburg, for example. We can see how the 1914 map clustered so many new developments compared to the map printed in 1897. As the city grew, the number of point of interests as well as the buildings and transit systems became much more crowded, in a way that the map printed in 1914 was overwhelming to process compared to the map printed 1897, which is much friendlier for the eye to study. These two maps got scanned in slices with very high quality and stitched together, a process that I am sure requires a lot of labor and time; however, technology requires an endless process of remastering. Let's take another look at the map of the same city, St. Petersburg on Google Maps. Although it once got digitized, every road that was once scanned has to be redrawn in vector format so that you can zoom in to the inches and not a single artifact from the old scanned prints can be seen. The same map also got a dynamic optimization transformation where only necessary information will be displayed based on the zoom level. Unlike the map printed in 1914, you are not bombarded and overwhelmed with unnecessary information.
Vectoring is a very labor intensive digitizing process, a technique that modern map businesses have to go through. Unlike scanning, which is digitally capturing pixel per pixel, vectoring requires a complete redraw using lines and polygonal shapes. This process completely eliminates the pixelation problem when the map needs to be scaled. It also allows software to manipulate, change color, turn off or on any of the lines and shapes based on the zoom level; this gives ways for dynamic optimization. Vectoring is a very interesting process and perhaps it could be something I can demonstrate for this course's final project.
Vectoring, that sent chills up my spine.
ReplyDeleteWith maps there is a further issue of scale and orientation that I largely ignored when I digitized my 1914 map since that was not important to my ultimate use of the map.