(All images are copyright of the Bodleian Library)
“When the Elizabethan gentleman John Sadler sat down to copy his collection of Latin sacred songs in c.1566-85, little did he know that he had chosen an overly acidic ink. Over the centuries this ink has burned through the paper leaving his once beautiful partbooks stained, difficult to read and too fragile to be handled.”
I was employed by the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) via the University of Oxford to assist with digital restoration of damaged manuscripts. This was a brilliant opportunity to combine my musical background with my technical Photoshop expertise.
I had the pleasure of working with and learning from a deeply knowledgeable, experienced, and personable team. They were making heavy use of the Clone Stamp tool, so I was able to contribute some more advanced Photoshop techniques to improve accuracy, speed, and image quality.
I also created a video tutorial series to explain the techniques to the team of 40+ volunteer contributors around the world, totalling ~18 minutes across 6 videos. You can watch one example from this below.
Together we restored over 300 images across 5 partbooks (each book being a different voice in the choir).