Abstract
On its journey “from the painting on the wall to the picture in the book”, the image sees its colour fidelity affected at several stages. This leads to difficult and expensive image retouching just before and during the printing process. The objective of the MARC project is to avoid these complex operations in proposing a new methodology for painting reproduction on printed material with accurate colours. The approach, described in this paper, consists in using a portable digital acquisition system for building a bank of high resolution reference images, converted into a device independant colorimetric format. The server of images thus set up, enriched with a set of applicative image processing programmes, is used by the museums, the authors or the editors to select and create images which are eventually converted into a printable format.
The MARC system is therefore expected to decrease the cost of catalogues and art books, as well as to improve the fidelity of the printed colours towards the originals' ones.
MARC is an ESPRIT project (n○6937) strongly driven by its users, and takes advantage of the experience gained by most of its members in the ESPRIT II VASARI project (n○2649). The MARC consortium, led by THOMSON-CSF/LER (F) comprises Bayerische Staatsgemalde Sammlungen (D), Hirmer Verlag (D), The National Gallery (UK), CCD Videometrie (D), Crosfield Electronics (UK), University of London, Birkbeck College (UK) and Schwitter AG (CH).