Wellcome Library Releases High-Resolution Images Free of Charge

From the Wellcome Library:

We are delighted to announce that over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements are now freely available through Wellcome Images.

Drawn from our vast historical holdings, the images are being released under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.

This means that they can be used for commercial or personal purposes, with an acknowledgement of the original source (Wellcome Library, London). All of the images from our historical collections can be used free of charge.

The images can be downloaded in high-resolution directly from the Wellcome Images website for users to freely copy, distribute, edit, manipulate, and build upon as you wish, for personal or commercial use. The images range from ancient medical manuscripts to etchings by artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Francisco Goya.

The earliest item is an Egyptian prescription on papyrus, and treasures include exquisite medieval illuminated manuscripts and anatomical drawings, from delicate 16th century fugitive sheets, whose hinged paper flaps reveal hidden viscera to Paolo Mascagni’s vibrantly coloured etching of an ‘exploded’ torso.

Other treasures include a beautiful Persian horoscope for the 15th-century prince Iskandar, sharply sketched satires by Rowlandson, Gillray and Cruikshank, as well as photography from  Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of motion. John Thomson’s remarkable nineteenth century portraits from his travels in China can be downloaded, as well a newly added series of photographs of hysteric and epileptic patients at the famous Salpêtrière Hospital.

Above Image: Wellcome Library, London. Horoscope of Prince Iskandar, grandson of Tamerlane, the Turkman Mongol conqueror.

Image and Research Resources Impacted by the Government Shutdown

Photograph of Socks the Cat Standing on the Press Podium in the Press Room at the White House: 12/05/1993
Photograph of Socks the Cat Standing on the Press Podium in the Press Room at the White House: 12/05/1993, courtesy U.S. National Archives Flickr Photostream

Below please find a partial list of image and online research resources that are impacted by this week’s federal government shutdown. We will continue to add to this list as more information is available.

Resources currently offline:

Library of Congress, including Prints & Photographs Catalog, Subject Authority Files, and the American Memory Project

NASA, including the NASA image exchange

Institute of Education Sciences

National Park Service

Census Bureau

The following sites are currently still available online, though they may not be updated during the shutdown:

Smithsonian Institution, including the Collections Search Center at http://collections.si.edu/search/

National Gallery of Art

National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health

Online Public Access (formerly known as ARC) for the National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/research/search/

US Army Corps of Engineers

Bureau of Labor Statistics

List courtesy of Heather Cleary, Otis College of Art and Design via the Visual Resources Association listserv.

 

25,000+ Downloadable Images from Artsy Education

Artsy recently announced the launch of Artsy Education and the ability to download 25,000+ open-access images.

Powered by The Art Genome Project, Artsy is a free website with a library of 50,000+ images from 650+ museum, nonprofit, and gallery partners, social media tools for telling stories about art, and e-commerce functionality to facilitate gallery sales and institutional fundraising.

More information about downloading images from Artsy is available here.

VRC Closed 8/30 – 9/2 for Labor Day

The Visual Resources Center will be closed from Friday, August 30th through Monday, September 2nd in observance of Labor Day.

We will reopen for regular hours on Tuesday, September 3rd. Enjoy your weekend and see you next week!

Image information: Labor Day Weekend Brings the Annual Garfield County Fair Parade, 09/1973, courtesy U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Flickr.

The Art Institute of Chicago’s Indoor GPS App

Ever find yourself lost and aimlessly wandering around the Art Institute of Chicago?

Now there’s an app for that.

The Art Institute announced Wednesday that it’s the first museum in the world to create a free “indoor GPS app” to make art more accessible to locals, out-of-towners and those who simply can’t find their way around a Degas painting or a Rodin sculpture.

The app provides customized tours that take guests on journeys through the museum. Tours are organized by occasions (such as a first date, family outing), theme (Chicago artists, fashion in art, etc.) and collections (American folk art, contemporary art, African art). Tours are also organized by time, whether guests plan on spending an entire day or just a few hours.

Via DNAInfo.com.

Changing Text Box Background Color in Photoshop

Are you trying to add labels to maps, charts, drawings, or other images in Photoshop? Are you finding it impossible to change the background color of your text box?

If so, that’s because it is impossible! Photoshop does not have this functionality. There is a workaround, however, if you’d like to continue working with your image in Photoshop:

First, create your text box by selecting the “T” tool from your Photoshop Toolbox.

You can change the size, style, and color of your font from the top menu.

Next, find your Rectangle Tool. It may be hidden behind a tool that looks like a forward slash (/). To switch tools, mouse over the / icon and hit control, then select the Rectangle Tool.

Using the Rectangle Tool, draw a box around your text. You can adjust the color and opacity from the top menu. If you don’t see an option for opacity at top, you can change the opacity from the layer adjustment tools at right.

You can then send the box you made behind the text by going to Layer > Arrange > Send Backward.

By default, each time you create a new object or text box you will create a new layer. You may want to flatten the image periodically, if you know that you won’t be making further adjustments to some boxes/text. You can also learn more about managing your layers in CS6 by viewing this tutorial.

 

ARTstor Outage, January 26 – 27

From ARTstor:

Please be advised that ARTstor will be performing an upgrade to our systems beginning on Saturday, January 26th at 11:00 PM EST and concluding on Sunday, January 27th at 1:00 PM EST. While the upgrade is being performed, users will not have access to the ARTstor Digital Library.

During the outage, please consider using LUNA instead for your image needs. If you experience difficulties with ARTstor after 1:00 PM EST on Sunday, try clearing your cache. If that doesn’t work, please contact userservices@artstor.org.

VRC Instruction Sessions Available

Welcome back to CWAC! Don’t forget this quarter that the VRC is available to you for all of your digital image needs. This includes introductory or refresher sessions about ARTstor and LUNA image databases (which can be tailored to your research projects), orientation to VRC image scanning services and lab equipment, or sessions on managing and citing images for thesis research. We can conduct these sessions in the classroom, in small groups, or individually. Feel free to email us at visualresources@uchicago.edu to set up a session or with any questions.

We hope the quarter is off to a good start!

Above image: Winter at Portland by Allen Tucker (1866-1939), 1907. Image Provider: Metropolitan Museum of Art via ARTstor.