Ultra High Resolution Photo of Night Watch (2022)

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/stories/operation-night-watch

by pieterr • 5 years ago

129 40 5 years ago

Tepix• 5 years ago

The website is down for me.

hericium• 5 years ago

Same here. There are several redirections (https://rijksmuseum.nl -> https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/ -> /nl) and then "Our services aren't available right now" (HTTP 503)

japers2• 5 years ago

It's back up

mikewarot• 5 years ago

Three years worth of painting, that explains the extraordinary level of detail on things like the weapons well out of the central focus of the painting. WOW

GekkePrutser• 5 years ago

You wouldn't download a painting

brainesy• 5 years ago

Cthulhu_• 5 years ago

Is the painting's imagery public domain or does the museum have weird exclusive rights to licensing images for it?

Actually a more interesting question: Does this new image dataset fall under 'newer' copyright laws / rights and is it copyrighted for the next 80 or so years, or does it fall under the copyright law of the original image, that is, expired?

unwind• 5 years ago

Meta: why is there a "(2022)" in the title? I thought years were included when an article is old, and that the default is to post news. Confusing.

erdmann5• 5 years ago

Perhaps it's intended to disambiguate it from the 20 µm resolution photo we released in May 2020 (the new one is 5 µm sampling resolution, so 16 times the pixel count). From the title alone one might dimly recall that past headline and assume it's a repost.

pieterr• 5 years ago

Exactly.

Previous posting from 2020:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23151934

jcelerier• 5 years ago

I went to the rijksmuseum when they were scanning it... sucked a bit but it's great that everyone on earth can see it in such glorious detail ! but that painting is so large in real life, I'd recommend anyone to go there and be amazed

mattferderer• 5 years ago

I agree! Never judge a painting without seeing it in person. A 2D replicated digital image, no matter the resolution, is not the same as seeing the brush strokes and paint layers or the size of the painting in person. Plus the colors & lighting will be different as well. Sometimes there is even an added benefit from the environment.

Of course, high res copies of these is a great thing to do as well. The above comment should take nothing away from that. They're just different things with different purposes.

hylaride• 5 years ago

Indeed! I grew up with my Dutch grandparents in Canada and they had a print of the Night Watch at home. When I turned the corner of the Rijksmuseum and saw it, I thought it was a post of the museum wing it was in. It's HUGE!

bostik• 5 years ago

Speaking of Rijksmuseum and seeing things in person, they maintain a small satellite exhibition at Schiphol airport[0]. It's a wonderful way to spend an hour if you're flying through and have long enough between flights to get bored but not long enough for even a short layover.

0: https://www.schiphol.nl/en/at-schiphol/discover/facilities/r...

erdmann5• 5 years ago

Glad to see this getting exposure on HN. I gave a PyCon keynote [1] last year about how this was done. I've also put the image online in my own viewer [2], which has a few additional features: it encodes the viewing location in the URL and it allows for multi-pane synchronized views [3]. (Please be nice to my server.) I'm happy to answer questions here or on Twitter (@erdmann).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_hm5oX7ZlE

[2] https://hyper-resolution.org/Nightwatch5

[3] https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?mode=trumpet&pointer=...

japers2• 5 years ago

I just watched your PyCon keynote and it's absolutely fascinating. Congratulations on the release of this amazing picture!

AreYouSirius• 5 years ago

It will be awesome to see also different spectrum layers ( UV,IR... ).

erdmann5• 5 years ago

We have collected data in several imaging modalities: RIS-VNIR (reflectance imaging spectroscopy, visible and near infrared (380 nm – 950 nm) in 3 nm bands), RIS-SWIR (same, but from 900 nm – 2500 nm), UV-induced visible fluorescence, MA-XRF (macro x-ray fluorescence, which lets us make elemental maps for elements heavier than Al), structured light scanning to capture 3D to about 15 µm resolution, x-radiograph, and others. I'll release them in due time...

j4yav• 5 years ago

Incredible to see the detail on how he is using paint in various transitions and ways when you get up close. You can zoom all the way into where a pupil takes up my entire 1080p screen, amazing!

rawoke083600• 5 years ago

Who thought and got excited thinking it was something to do with "DISCWORLD" ? Not that this (the painting + work) isn't amazing by itself !

Sam Vimes

nataz• 5 years ago

I've always wanted a high resolution image of the discworld night watch cover art based on this painting...

Link to an interview with Paul Kidby about the night watch cover art:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/blo...

thesimp• 5 years ago

If you zoom in all the way then then it almost becomes a landscape with craters and canyons. And the dark parts become pictures of distant galaxies. These details can easily be used as textures for a game.

Flying around in NightWatchPunk1642. Pre-order soon!

cesaref• 5 years ago

It's a great technical achievement, but i'm not sure I appreciate it any more by looking at these sorts of close up details. The overall composition, colours, use of light etc is where the beauty is for me, not the close up detail of how a button was painted.

erdmann5• 5 years ago

Fair enough. Its utility is mainly for serving as a virtual microscope for conservation purposes. For example, here [1] is a lead soap [2] particle up close, here [3] is a very detailed view of the dog showing exposed canvas, and here [4] is some retouching from a past conservation treatment in the face of the main figure. These kinds of things help us to make decisions about future conservation treatments, help to document the exact state of the painting for future comparison, and help us to appreciate Rembrandt's mastery with paint (e.g. the unintuitive way he depicts lace [5]). All in all, it should give the public a greater appreciation of how much effort we put into collection care at a museum.

[1] https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.326,0.666&r...

[2] https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/conservation-and-sci...

[3] https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.522,0.466&r...

[4] https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.551,0.619&r...

[5] https://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.500,0.527&r...

formerly_proven2• 5 years ago

All of your links go to the exact center of the image (Firefox 95).

spockz2• 5 years ago

I wonder. Does a painter take into account how the paints dry and age when painting? Say, so that it appears at its optimum a year after it is finished as opposed to directly after finishing? Is there a purpose to do so?

cainxinth• 5 years ago

Well, painters have been using varnish for centuries to add gloss and a protective coating, so clearly they had some considerations about longevity.

spockz2• 5 years ago

Yes okay. I was thinking more along the lines of “this red fades quicker than this yellow. So if I want the picture to be in harmony in 2 years still I need to put in the red now a bit thicker. Even if that means that right after finishing it doesn’t look as they intended.

baltimore• 5 years ago

From the website:

This is the largest and most detailed photo ever taken of a work of art. It is 717 gigapixels, or 717,000,000 pixels, in size.

One of the numbers above is off by a factor of 1,000

erdmann5• 5 years ago

Ouch. Indeed. Thanks for noticing this. I've reported it to our web people.

It's 925 000 px × 775 000 px which is 717 gigapixels (9 zeros).

smcameron• 5 years ago

Anybody else looking for James Mickens in the background?

ape4• 5 years ago

Zooming in really close, some parts look like a satellite image of earth

HPsquared• 5 years ago

While high resolution 2D scanning is nice, I would like to see some specular and bump mapping. This would enhance the experience of viewing the works in VR.

Syzygies• 5 years ago

Is an obsession with "originals" as quaint as our desire to walk on Mars, rather than sending robots?

My first reaction (after amazement) was to imagine a machine coloring in the cracks. The future will always see any effort in this direction as primitive. Why didn't we wait for their tools?

A full-scale reproduction, recreating the feeling of the painting when it was new, doesn't have that problem. I want a robotic setup that scans, and 3D prints elsewhere with paint.

Meanwhile, does the art restoration world place a premium on using dissimilar materials, that prevent further disintegration while fooling the eye, but are easily distinguished by future scanning techniques? I can imagine purists insisting on "authentic" materials that will be confused with the original painting in the future.

dandelany• 5 years ago

Meanwhile, does the art restoration world place a premium on using dissimilar materials, that prevent further disintegration while fooling the eye, but are easily distinguished by future scanning techniques?

Yes - as I understand it, restoration involves careful use of solvents to remove old layers of varnish/added paint, followed by a new coat of varnish to protect the original underlying paint, followed by inpainting/overpainting (filling on cracks and/or painting over damage). This is done using materials that can be easily removed by future restorers without damaging the original. I imagine these layers would show up on a sufficiently high-res scan, too.

wdb• 5 years ago

Thank you for posting it. Brilliant page, I enjoying admiring the skill of Rembrandt. I like that you can see previous conservators work.

buildbot• 5 years ago

Interesting camera choice to be honest - slightly surprised they went with an bayer sensor+multishot to remove the interpolation vs. a mono sensor and a filter wheel or something for a project of this scale.

Ultra High Resolution Photo of Night Watch (2022)

Related Stories