The Digital Imaging lab at APAC labs / STARC has been continuously evolving building capacity in qualitative multigenre digital imaging and visual content to a wide variety of case studies in the culture and archaeological domain.
Methods of digital acquisition include an array of approaches in the 2D and 3D imaging domain such as 2D high-resolution conservation photography, 2D Medium and Large Format photography and scanning (MF, LF), 360-degree spherical panoramic photography, multispectral imaging (MSI), Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), 3D Photogrammetry - Structure from Motion (SfM), 3D laser scanning and Infrared Reflectography (IRR).
Digital imaging recording approaches are based on international standards supported by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), CIPA Heritage Documentation, the American Institute of Conservation (AIC), Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) and the IPTC Information Interchange Model (IIM).
An important opportunity to develop expert capacity to document and visualize ecclesiastical artefacts and objects was offered by the project “Digital Aposphragisma of Hagionymous Islands” led by the Holy Bishopric of Limassol and with the participation of the Holy Archbishopric of Crete, The Cyprus Institute, the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT, Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics), the Foundation of Research and Technology (FORTH, Center of Cultural Informatics) and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Heraklion in Crete. The project was supported by an INTERREG-VA 2014-2020 Cyprus - Greece grant.
It involved the interdisciplinary study of documentation procedures for the long-term digitization and preservation of ecclesiastical cultural heritage. In addition, the project aimed to use a novel methodology that integrates 2D and 3D image documentation, along with 4D metadata/paradata digitalisation.
APAC Labs multimedia and CGI engineer Ropertos Georgiou led the technical research development and diffusion of the project as it evolved. More than 1,500 original objects were documented in situ and in museums. The project also offered a series of workshops and educational material to support the transfer of technical knowledge and know-how procedures for the 2D and 3D data acquisition, documentation and visualization of cultural heritage artefacts and objects. The applied methodological approach originated from the research work and digital imaging expertise at APAC Lads developing multi-level documentation procedures for such objects in a specific location and time. Work for this project also tackled the challenges that lie between two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) images and sensor-based technologies for the documentation and visualization of objects.
