The digital images available in the University of Florida Herbarium Collections Catalog and Type Specimens web sites are prepared using several types of scanners and digital cameras. This work is facilitated by the collaboration of the Florida Museum of Natural History / University of Florida Herbarium, University of Florida Libraries Digital Library Center and the Florida Center for Library Automation. Specific personnel involved with the imaging are listed in the contacts and credits sections of these web sites.
Summary lists and a search form for available specimen images are linked on the Digital Imaging Projects web page. Complete listings include those arranged by species, family/species, Englerian phylogeny and herbarium specimen accession number. Project listings highlight a few selected categories of plants. These are: Introduced Florida Plant Species, Potentially Poisonous Florida Plant Species, UF Herbarium Type Specimens, Insectivorous Florida Plant Species, John Bartram's Botany: St. Augustine to Picolata and Floristic Inventory of Kanapaha Botanical Gardens project specimens.
Image file names are based on the accession number of the herbarium specimen. The system used for naming the files is detailed in the Management Notes section of the Type Specimens site.
The highest resolution images are prepared by the staff of the George A. Smathers Libraries Digital Library Center. These images are acquired using a ZBE Satellite large format stationary camera equipped with a PowerPhase ARI cameraback, 135mm Rodenstock lens and daylight filter. Computer support is currently a Macintosh (PowerMac G4) computer system with 17 gigabytes of storage and ~ 800 megabytes of active memory. Camera images are matched with a 1.8 gamma monitor, relative colorimetrics and the "BEST" quality for rendering profiles. Colorimetrics are calibrated using Kodak Q-60R1 target per ANSI IT8.7/2-1993(1999:04). Intermediate processing of digital herbarium images is achieved with Adobe Photoshop 5.0. Final archives are recorded on CD's with accessible images available on the Internet via the Lizardtech viewing source Mr. SID. from the Florida Center for Library Automation web server.
Every effort has been made to preserve images as accurately as the original. Specimens are photographed at a 1:1 ratio, meaning camera height, DPI (ppi), and output image are all consistent with the original. This means that an 11.5 x 17.5 in. specimen sheet is actually preserved as an 11.5 x 17.5 in. final image. A measurement scale has been included in the images as a reference. In most cases post-production manipulation is unnecessary, but occasionally (usually those with several centimeters of depth of field) it is necessary to use the sharpening and brightness/contrast filters in Adobe Photoshop 5.0.
Digital files are acquired using Phase-One camera software with a gray balanced standard film curve and ISO sensitivity of 400. Specimens are initially recorded as Macintosh (3 vector) images with final format being TIFF files with color depth at 24/16 millions of colors. Generally entire sheet specimens can take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes (in some cases up to 25 min.) to acquire, have an average of 450 DPI (ppi), and file sizes around 140 megabytes. Close-up's can take anywhere from 45 seconds to 5 minutes and may exceed 3500 DPI (ppi), and can range from 500 bytes to 80 megabytes in size.
Staff and volunteers in the University of Florida Herbarium are acquiring images of selected specimens on a flatbed scanner, Microtek Scanmaker 9600XL. Specimens are scanned at 400 ppi and saved in tif format (.tif). Most of the specimens available in the Floristic Inventory of Kanapaha Botanical Gardens project are prepared by this method.
Digital images of plant materials taken with consumer model digital cameras prior to pressing are being added to compliment the specimens. Most of these images are prepared and posted in jpeg (.jpg) format.
All tif format images are converted to SID format by the Digital Library Center. The images are made available on the Internet via the Lizardtech viewing source Mr. SID from the Florida Center for Library Automation web server.
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