Non-Destructive Scanning: Long Scrolls of Chinese Watercolour Art

The majority of the scanning services in Vancouver we provide are to capture business documents for companies so that they can more easily access and manage the information contained within these documents.

We Scan Delicate Artwork & Large Format

Sometimes we run into requests from potential clients to scan things that are a little out of the ordinary. Such was the case when were approached by a company that had “Artwork” to scan.

Our initial impression was that this would be scanning oil paintings or some other type of material that does not lend itself to scanning through a traditional large format scanner, which transport the material through it as it is scanned.

The concern was that we could potentially damage our equipment in trying to scan the Artwork or even worse, damage the client’s material!

Non-Destructive Scanning: Scrolls of Chinese Watercolour

Scanning Scrolls 20 Feet Long!

After further discussions with the client, it turned out that the objects were in fact, scrolls of Chinese watercolours. These scrolls could be up to 20 or more feet long, but fortunately, they were only up to three feet wide. The scrolls were painted on thick paper/cloth and given their considerable length, could impose problems feeding through a scanner. To alleviate our concerns, we suggested that they bring some of the material to our office so that we could try scanning it and see how it would feed and gauge the quality  the of the resulting images.

Getting High Quality Digital Images

We spent most of the morning testing and scanning their Artwork to ensure that the documents would feed correctly, not damage the material and produce high quality digital images. They needed the best possible results so that they could digitally archive them. But, they also needed to be able to reduce the file size for easy viewing and to make them accessible on the Internet.

The digital images produced were excellent and the client was very happy. Doing a test of the documents allowed us to confirm that our method of scanning worked and the resulting images were what the client required.