The New, Expanded Digital Sample Book

Check it out at www.digitalsamplebook.org!

We’re in the process of expanding and repurposing the Digital Sample Book. Our goal is to make it possible to visually explore and compare not only ink jet and other types of digital prints, but also pre-photographic prints, nineteenth-century photographic and
photomechanical prints, twentieth-century silver gelatin prints, and color photographic prints. In the coming months, watch this exciting new version of the web site as it develops.

Digital Sample Book was originally conceived as an educational tool and practical guide to inkjet prints and papers. The new Digital Sample Book will offer information about the history, care, and identification of more traditional printed images as well. The goal is to build a useful resource for archival institutions, conservation and preservation staff, educators, photographers, collectors, historians, and others interested in the printed image.

The techniques used to create the images in the new Digital Sample Book are adaptations of techniques used in IPI’s ongoing silver-gelatin black-and-white paper characterization project, which examines, evaluates, and documents the physical appeal of twentieth-century photographic prints using various lighting techniques, magnification, and cross-section to depict the subtle physical differences between various types of photographic paper.