DIGITIZATION OF FORMATS FROM MODERN TO OBSOLETE

Transform your Film Collection with conservation image quality

Digitization of film, slides and other transparent and transmissive materials is especially demanding. Whether a museum, library, corporation or university, institutions looking to preserve their cultural heritage often hold common photographic media like 35mm slide film and microfilm. But your collection may also contain more esoteric material like glass plate negatives, nitrate film, lantern slides, medical x-rays, hand-cut film or large format film. Digitizing these collections requires a combination of preservation image quality, conservation handling, production speed and extensive flexibility. 

Image quality is especially important when scanning film. Film grain is measured in microns and depth of field is razor thin, requiring extremely high-resolution scanning and specially-designed lenses. Accurate color reproduction is also critical, requiring lights specifically designed and manufactured for the purpose. Fragile or unstable photographic materials, especially glass plate negatives and films with a nitrate base, need careful handling to protect them from fingerprints, scratches, excessive heat and further degradation. And fast, modern, enterprise-ready software demands output images in multiple formats that integrate into collections management systems.

That’s where Pixel Acuity really shines.

Our worldwide client base of major cultural and scientific institutions knows us as the authority on heritage digitization, with an in-depth understanding of the issues and challenges of working with your often fragile collections. Pixel Acuity offers specialized skills, techniques and workflow experience, combined with advanced digitization technology purpose-built by our hardware division DT Heritage. Together, our team of experts in hardware, software, services and workflow optimization work hand-in-hand to deliver a seamless experience for film imaging projects of every possible scope.

 

Why choose Pixel Acuity?

• Not sure where to start, how long it will take, what equipment you need, or how to pay for it? The Pixel Acuity team will help plan your project, including technological assessments and development of timelines and budgets, to determine the best solution for your project. 
• Our specialists will design advanced digitization workflows that blend seamlessly with your daily operations. Our proprietary workflow software, DT PixelFlow, uses artificial intelligence (AI) and other techniques to analyze the images and deliver best-in-class optical character recognition (OCR), facial recognition and metadata generation so that your stakeholders can easily find what they’re looking for when repurposing assets.
• Pixel Acuity can produce 130 megapixel images, the highest image quality on the market and more than five times the pixel density now common in Cultural Heritage imaging. Since you’re making the effort to digitize, we use the highest resolution digital backs on the market to make sure the quality stands the test of time — so that you can repurpose it in multiple ways well into the future.
• Our preservation-grade practices, and lenses incorporating specially-designed optics, meet the highest Cultural Heritage imaging standards, including FADGI, Metamorfoze, and ISO 19264.
• Using a rapid capture system custom engineered by Pixel Acuity, we are able to radically shorten the timeline of digitization for larger collections 
• For fragile or curled material, we use magnetic masks that hold the film from the edges and never contact the image-bearing area of the film, rather than legacy bulk loaders or feeders that are not safe for historic collections of film
• Our conservation-safe illumination and preservation-grade spectral output are perfect for the digitization of diverse collections of film and other transmissive materials. 
• We can output images in multiple formats for various levels of institutional use, including archival RAW files, production master TIFFs, and email-able JPGs
• We are able to accommodate your institution’s file naming and numbering conventions for output, and use XML templates to embed metadata with your images
• No need for risk handling, packing, and transporting your fragile, one-of-a-kind items. Wherever your collection is in the world, we’ll bring the team and equipment to you. Learn more about our international capabilities by reading about Pixel Acuity’s recent trip to Estonia.
• So many of the world’s most demanding and respected film archives have trusted Pixel Acuity to digitize their prized collections, no matter their age, condition, size or shape. Get the full picture by reading our case studies.

COMPLETE END-TO-END SYSTEMS

Industry-Leading Imaging Technology

 

We fully appreciate the importance of blending seamlessly into your institution’s daily operations, and can digitize your artifacts in our own facility, or on your own site if they can’t be moved from their permanent location. Our digitization hardware and software, enabled by artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies, are designed to work together smoothly with carefully optimized workflows.

• Custom-engineered rapid-capture systems create an ultra-high-resolution digital copy of your collection quickly and systematically. The result: minimize cost and radically shorten the time required for capture.
• Pixel Acuity’s DT PixelFlow software enables our team to make the most of digital assets by extracting, analyzing, and transcribing text using optical character recognition (OCR) and applying artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to provide facial, object, and geographic descriptive metadata information.
• By combining DT Heritage hardware solutions, Pixel Acuity’s artificial intelligence (AI) processing software, and our team’s expertise, we can digitize anything – even deteriorating film, hand-cut sheets, lantern slides, or glass plate negatives – at a level of detail you cannot get anywhere else.

MAKE YOUR ASSETS WORK FOR YOU

Find new value in your photographic heritage

 

There is tremendous value in the film negatives and positives in your collection, and digitization unlocks that value. Reimagine the many ways your staff and all your stakeholders can use these one-of-a-kind heritage assets. You can quickly and easily produce retrospectives focusing on a photographer or genre, or capitalizing on current events. Create ads, social media campaigns, and other brand-building efforts. License images to publishers and advertisers. Inspire a director with the historic photos to accurately recreate set designs or costumes for the next big remake or sequel. The list is endless.

Digitization is the key to uncovering new value from artifacts in libraries, archives, natural history and art museums, media and entertainment, sports franchises, and many other fields. The beauty of digital assets is that they are clearly differentiated, unique, endlessly reusable, and ideally suited to the digital and social media age! By digitizing your photographic or cultural collection and adding the assets to your content management system you can turn those precious items into new value… and create a digital record of your history in the process!