Technical Information
The digital images in the Carol M. Highsmith archive are either scans created by Highsmith of her negatives and transparencies or are original digital photographs. The catalog record displays indicate if the original image is a negative, a transparency, or a digital image. The images represent the way the photographer interprets the scenes she has photographed. In some cases, Highsmith cropped or enhanced the digital images to emulate her traditional darkroom techniques and to convey her personal aesthetic.
The digital photographs were created by Highsmith using a variety of equipment, therefore the highest resolution image available may vary from 4000 pixels on the long side to 8000 pixels or higher. The scans of the negatives and transparencies were created by Highsmith following Library of Congress specifications shown below.
Specifications for the Collection
Uncompressed Archival Images
| Spatial Resolution: | At least 5,000 pixels on the long side with the short side scaled in proportion for file names ending in u.tif (10-73 megabytes) |
| Tonal (pixel depth) resolution: | 8 bits per pixel (grayscale) or 24 bits per pixel (RGB color) |
| Image enhancement: | None. |
| File format: | Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) ver. 6.0 |
| Compression: | None |
Compressed Service Images
| Spatial resolution: | 640 pixels on the long side with the short side scaled in proportion for file names ending r.jpg (20-126 kilobytes); 1024 pixels on the long side with the short side scaled in proportion for file names ending v.jpg (42-377 kilobytes) |
| Tonal (pixel depth) resolution: | 8 bits per pixel (grayscale or RGB) |
| Image enhancement: | Mild sharpening |
| File format: | JPEG |
| Compression: | Compressed to yield an average compression ratio of 10:1 |
Thumbnail Images
| Spatial Resolution: | 150 pixels on the long side with the short side scaled in proportion for file names ending in t.gif (approximately 10-20 kilobytes) |
| Tonal (pixel depth) resolution: | 8 bits per pixel (grayscale or RGB) |
| Image enhancement: | Mild sharpening |
| File format: | Archived copy: TIFF - Tagged Image File Format Online copy: GIF - Graphics Interchange Format |
| Compression: | Archived copy: Uncompressed Online copy: Compression native to the GIF format |