Using computer vision to unlock a wealth of photographic history

Visiting the NY Times was always among the real treats of my time working on Photoshop. I was always struck by the thoughtfulness & professionalism of the staff, but also by the gritty, brass-tacks considerations of cranking through thousands of images daily, often using some pretty dated infrastructure.

Now Google’s Cloud Vision tools are helping to tap into that infrastructure—specifically, bringing treasures of “The Morgue” back into the light by making their patchwork annotations searchable.

The morgue contains photos from as far back as the late 19th century, and many of its contents have tremendous historical value—some that are not stored anywhere else in the world. In 2015, a broken pipe flooded the archival library, putting the entire collection at risk. Luckily, only minor damage was done, but the event raised the question: How can some of the company’s most precious physical assets be safely stored?

Check it out:

NewImage

[YouTube] [Via]

One thought on “Using computer vision to unlock a wealth of photographic history

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *