FAQ – Digitizing and Reproducing Art and Cultural Heritage

recom art care offers professional digitization services for paintings, drawings, and two-dimensional artworks.
The focus is on color-accurate, high-resolution digital images for archiving, documentation, research, and reproduction.D

Yes, oil paintings can be professionally scanned and digitized, provided that a contactless fine-art scanning process is used.
When digitizing oil paintings, controlled, low-reflection lighting is crucial, as oil paintings often feature highlights and a distinct surface texture.

High-resolution capture systems with color-accurate color management are used to scan paintings. This produces precise digital reproductions for archiving, documentation, research, or reproduction.
The process does not damage the original and is also suitable for delicate or historical works of art.

Whether a photograph or a scan is suitable for digitizing paintings depends on the intended use.
A fine-art scan offers uniform lighting, high resolution, and color-accurate results, and is particularly suitable for archiving, documentation, and reproduction.
Photographic reproduction can be useful for very large formats (larger than 2 m x 3 m), surfaces with pronounced relief, or when working specifically with raking light.
For the precise digitization of artworks, scanning is often the more technically reliable solution.

With our Cruse scanner, we can scan works up to 2 m x 1.5 m directly. For larger works, we create multiple individual scans, which are then digitally stitched together. Using the Cruse, we can digitize works up to 2 m x 3 m. A loose canvas can also be larger. We’re happy to make the impossible possible.

Precision: CRUSE

Our Cruse scanner and our DOM are suitable for oil, acrylic, tempera, and watercolor paintings, as well as works on paper, photographs, and large-format architectural plans.
We would be happy to advise you in advance on which method is best suited for your specific artwork.
Digitization is carried out by arrangement and in accordance with conservation requirements.

The artwork to be scanned can be brought in person or shipped to us (please pack fragile items in a wooden crate!). You are also welcome to pick up the artwork yourself, or we can ship it via courier (within Berlin) or through TANDEM, our partner for art logistics (worldwide).

“Archive-quality” refers to digital image files that are suitable for long-term, lossless storage. This includes high resolution, an open file format (e.g., TIFF), sufficient color depth, and the embedding of technical and content-related metadata. Archive-quality files serve as digital masters and are not compressed or modified at a later stage.

A color-accurate reproduction aims to reproduce the colors of the original as precisely as possible. This requires calibrated equipment, controlled lighting conditions, and consistent color management using ICC profiles.

Standard lighting refers to standardized lighting conditions under which colors can be objectively assessed. It ensures that colors appear comparable regardless of the room, time of day, or light source. Typical parameters include a defined color temperature (e.g., D50 ≈ 5000 K), a high color rendering index, and uniform illumination. In art and image digitization, standard lighting is used to compare originals, scans, and reproductions with color accuracy. We use standard lighting to reliably detect color deviations and create a neutral reference for color.

A reference scan is a high-resolution, color-accurate digital reproduction of a work of art or document that serves as a technical reference. It is created under standardized conditions, often using non-contact fine-art scanners and color management, to accurately capture the original colors, level of detail, and texture. Reference scans are used for archiving, documentation, research, or reproduction and enable comparability across time, devices, or printing processes. They form the basis for digital editing, color correction, or printing without altering the original.

For many printing applications, 300 dpi is sufficient. However, for artwork, historical photographs, or templates with fine details, a higher resolution may be useful in order to accurately reproduce structures and surfaces.

600 dpi describes the resolution of a digital image file and indicates how many pixels per inch are captured. This resolution is particularly useful for finely structured templates, scientific documentation, or high-quality reproductions. Whether 600 dpi is necessary depends on the object, the level of detail, and the intended use.

dpi (dots per inch) refers to the print resolution, while ppi (pixels per inch) refers to the screen resolution of a digital file. In everyday use, the two terms are often used interchangeably, but technically they describe different aspects of image display. In short, ppi is the input format and dpi is the output format.

TIFF is considered the standard format for long-term archiving. The format is lossless, widely used, and independent of proprietary software. For web or previews, we create additional derivatives such as JPEG or PNG.

This question isn’t easy to answer and depends on many factors, such as the size of the artwork, the number of light sources, the resolution, the color palette, and, last but not least, the project requirements.
We would be happy to answer this question for you in this specific case once we have clarified the details.