Roslin Glass Plate Slides Digitisation Sample Project

Previously we’ve introduced the Roslin Glass Slides Collection and have posted a selection of the 3,465 images in various posts. It is a goal of ours to digitise the collection for easier access to these images and, also, for conservation purposes. While digitising the entire collection is a future project, we’ve managed to find funds in the Towards Dolly budget to have the photographer from the University of Edinburgh’s Digital Imaging Unit (DIU) do a ‘scoping project’  or ‘sample’ and digitise 50 of the slides! As she began work on the slides she found a slide with an interesting feature – it was an early example of someone using an early form of Photoshop on an image! To see her more in-depth discussion of the image read her blog post, Analogue Photoshop?

Maori Girl in Canoe

Admittedly it’s quite hard to tell from this small image; however, looking closely, she said you notice the way the light falls on the water on the background and the size differentiation between the girl in the canoe in the foreground and the other canoe in the background is off and the edging around the girl looks like she’s been cut out from one image and placed on another. This is just one example of the curiosities found and hopefully, once the rest of the slides are digitised, they’ll provide more insight into the quirky nature of this collection.