Digital Photography

Digital photography is by some estimates destined to become one of the next big technical transformation-a huge market ripe for innovation. Despite enormous advances in camera and image processing technology, consumers still prefer photographic prints to digitally printed pictures. By most objective measures, digitally printed pictures are superior to photographs in both resolution and color. Modern ink jet printers can produce imagines with more than 1,200 pixels per inch. None-the-less, consumers still prefer photographic prints even though these prints normally do not exceed resolutions of 200 dpi. Perceived quality is substantially different from and vastly more important to the consumer than many of the objective measures now used to evaluate and compare printers.

This research project explores a variety of methods for enhancing digital prints to make them more "photographic" in perceived quality. It seeks to extend the lifetime of printed images. Ultimately one seeks a process to preserve images for decades and longer.