John Dee: photo editing to reveal hidden signatures

The RCP library has the largest known surviving collection of books owned by John Dee, the Elizabethan polymath. In several of these Dee’s signature has been over-written or obliterated by a man called Nicholas Saunder.

Astrologiae iudiciariae ysagogica. Jean Taisnier, published Cologne, 1559

It’s possible to disentangle the two different signatures if you examine them very closely. As part of the exhibition research I edited an image of them in order to show Dee’s original signature and then Saunders’ over the top.



Months and months ago I showed these images to a group on a visit to see some John Dee books from the CILIP RBSCG annual conference. I promised to explain how I'd made them, and at long last, here's a how-to.

I started with a high-quality close-up photograph of the signatures, and I edited it using Photoshop Elements. Other photo-editing programmes are available (such as the free GNU Image Manipulation Programme) and would work just as well. The functions will probably look a bit different, though.

The first step is to create a new layer. Layers are like old-fashioned sheets of acetate that you can pile up on top of each other. You can edit what’s on each layer individually, and can set the transparency (and other attributes) of each layer. Create your new layer via the layer menu.
 

 

Next, I painted the new layer white using the bucket tool.

Then I set transparency of the new layer to around 40%. You can switch which layers you can see by clicking the little eye icon next to the layer name.

To reveal one of the signatures, I used the eraser tool to remove areas of the white layer, to reveal the full-colour ink beneath. There was no magic involved – just a lot of careful editing, using the book itself as a reference. You can change the size and shape of the eraser tool using the controls at the top of the window. If you erase too much then you can add it back using the brush.

I used exactly the same procedure to uncover the Saunder signature. It took ages, with plenty of switching between the two to check that all the bits of ink were accounted for.

When I was happy with the images, I saved each as a separate jpg file, and saved the Photoshop file so that I could come back later and tinker with the images further.

I’d hoped to use this image in the exhibition proper, and to display it next to the book itself. The image didn’t make the final cut, but we’ve been using a gif (animated image) of the two different signatures fading in and out as part of the exhibition publicity. Watch this space for a post about how I made the gif itself.

Visual metaphors for libraries/librarians/information professionals

After the agonies of choosing images to use for my Ignite talk, and with a fairly whacky idea forming for an entry into the LISNPN library advocacy competition, I've had visual metaphors on my mind these last few days.

What can replace pictures of books?

What images can we use to illustrate and promote the work of the modern-day library and information world? Time was that a picture of a shelf of books, a card catalogue, or a set of library steps, would suffice to create in the viewer an impression of library-ness. But if we want to convey something of the multi-faceted nature of library work, of the focus on information evaluation and organization, of the myriad formats and sources used, how can that be done? Is there a single visual image that conveys the idea 'information'?

I'd be very interested to hear people's ideas. Do you think that we need something more than books? Can you do better than the Guardian's brain?  A few people have commented on the aptness of the yarn slides (10 and 11) in my 'Why Libraries are Great' slidedeck; is there a way to express that idea more succinctly?

Things 9 and 10: "See'st thou this sweet sight?"

This post is late and disjointed because I've been swallowed whole by the Flickr ministracts pool and am still struggling to surface back in the real world. (As evidenced by my accidental publishing of my notes for this post. D'oh!) It was all the fault of Sir Cam's interpretation of Nick Turvey's sculpture 'Chief' at the Fitzwilliam Museum's Sculpture Promenade, so I'm fully blaming the Cam23: they recommended him.

I've used Flickr for my personal photos for a while, and don't have any complaints about it as a tool for organising (both heirarchically and with tags) and sharing images.  Elsewhere across the Cam23-o-sphere (do you think that name will catch on?) a few posts about Flickr have caught my eye: I disagree with Andy Priestner regarding the necessity (or otherwise) to credit photographs used online - I think it's bad manners not to, so I always try to include credit, at the very least in the alt and title tags on images; Isla analyses well the difference in utility between Flickr and Google; and Helen concludes that Flickr might be good, but it's not for her.

I feel, though, that the focus of Things 9 and 10 on the use of images for library posters and presentations is misplaced.  Its a useful tool because of the availability of rights information, but it's not a good place to find stock photos.  I'm much more interested in it as a tool for institutions wanting to publicise their own images and collections.  I'd already heard about the British Postal Museum and Archive's use of Flickr to engage with philatelists, to amass postal-service-related images, and find out more about some of their photographs, and quick searches for 'library' and 'museum' in the people field turned up hundreds, including:

• National Maritime Museum
• Corning Museum of Glass
• Museum of Modern Art
• Salvidor Dali Museum
• Iowa State University Library Special Collections
• Boston Public Library
• Library of Congress

Some of these photostreams seem to be for internal use - photographs of events and photos for use on blogs.  But many of them are clearly outward-facing, and some have also set up groups for other Flickr users to add their own photos of relevant material - an interesting means of visitor engagement:

• National Maritime Museum - Sailor Chic and Beside the Seaside
• Museum of Modern Art

Vanessa Lacey wonders if Flickr could be used to promote retrospective cataloguing projects, and these institutions provide interesting models for collection and project promotion via Flickr.

Oh, I Wordled, too, with text from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Wordsearch fans, have a look for 'dead athenian snout' (click on the pictures to make them larger).  A top Wordle tip is to right-click on words that you want to remove.

P.S. To show I can do the searching-for-creative-commons-licensed-photos-Thing, here are a couple of licensed pictures that caught my eye.  Other eye-catchers (licensed and otherwise) can be seen in my galleries and my favourites (ongoing projects, both).

'Stitch closeup' by unertlkm on Flickr | 'Abstract' by tanakawho on Flickr