The MARC Project

      The MARC (Methodology for Art Reproduction in Color) project was a project that, like the VASARI project, was funded by the European Community. In fact, the project was actually "built" on top of the VASARI project. It was supposed to last for three years, but it began in December 1995 and ended in March 1996. The project sought to improve the process of printing.

The Camera

      The MARC camera itself was designed to be an extremely high-resolution camera. It was a 20k x 20k pixel camera.
Image Demonstrating the Resolution Capabilities of the MARC Camera
      The MARC camera's claim to fame is the fact that it was used to create the first known digital art book. It was used to create the catalogue for the paintings of Alte Pinakotek in Munich. This was used as part of the final demonstration of the MARC project.
The Actual MARC Camera
 

Comparing MARC with the Original VASARI project

      One obvious difference between the two procedures is the actual camera. The MARC camera is much more portable than the Kontron, and had much more resolution capabilities. Also, the MARC camera was much more portable, as stated before. The capabilities of the MARC camera were such that the pixel ability varied depending on position. The original project had a more fixed pixel per area ratio because the camera was in a fixed position. Also, the lighting environment produced different results. In the MARC procedure, the lighting looks the same as the photograph, that is the light is adjusted based on the photograph. In the original VASARI project, the light illumination is maximized; however the objects must be mostly planar. This is because of the requirement that the image lie in the same plane as the calibration chart. The process with the MARC camera seems to be much quicker as well.

       The camera itself is one that has self-positioning hardware inside, which allows for the portability of the camera. The output data of the camera is in CIElab, i.e. it is colormetric. Uncompressed images can take up to 1.6Gbytes. This is due to the high resolution of the images.
 


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