Recolouring historic maps: between reconstruction, falsification and amelioration:

Maps sometimes get lost or deteriorate. They sometimes remain until today only in the form of black and white photocopies which were made before the era of digital reproduction techniques. Colourful originals are then replaced with copies of them. Modern digital tools (graphic software; Geographic I...

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
1. Verfasser: Panecki, Tomasz 19XX- (VerfasserIn)
Format: Elektronisch Artikel
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 2024
Online-Zugang:DE-255
Zusammenfassung:Maps sometimes get lost or deteriorate. They sometimes remain until today only in the form of black and white photocopies which were made before the era of digital reproduction techniques. Colourful originals are then replaced with copies of them. Modern digital tools (graphic software; Geographic Information Systems) allow us to recolour such maps to make them more legible for the contemporary user or graphically closer to the lost original. In this paper, I discuss this issue using the example of recolouring the Gaul/Raczyński map of the Poznań Department (1807–1812). The map’s digital edition contains not only georeferenced image and geodatabase tied with the web GIS application, but also digitally reconstructed graphics. Colour reconstruction was conducted in two stages. The first involved vectorization of the map content in graphic design software with Adobe Photoshop and the second, allocating individual colours to the map’s features based on the analysis of various materials: mapping instructions, historical handbooks for cartography and similar maps. The process of recolouring the map made it more legible and the colour scheme was derived from similar maps. In the discussion, I discuss the possibilities and constraints of such reconstructions which might be considered either as amelioration of the map’s graphics or falsification.
Beschreibung:Illustrationen, Karten
ISBN:978-90-04-46736-1
DOI:10.1163/9789004467361_004