The Saint John’s Bible

HOW A WORLD CLASS PROJECT WAS DIGITALLY IMAGED TO MAKE REPRODUCTIONS TO LAST FOR CENTURIES TO COME  

Situation
 
The Saint John’s Bible is the first handwritten, illuminated Bible commissioned since the advent of the printing press. It was commissioned in 1998 by the Benedictine monks of Saint John’s Abbey and University to ignite the spiritual imagination of believers throughout the world and to illuminate the Word of God for a new millennium. The text and illuminations of The Saint John's Bible encourage us to take our time — to live with the images and words. Saint John’s University, Liturgical Press and fine art printers collaborated to offer a range of quality reproductions including the Heritage Edition, trade edition reproduction books and fine art prints and cards. Saint John’s worked with ArcaSearch/ColorMax to preserve the images of The Saint John’s Bible digitally and make high-quality reproduction possible in the centuries to come. The first step in the reproduction process is digital photography to capture the image. More than 10 years ago it took 28 minutes to photograph a single image. With the advancement of technology, it is now an instant-capture digital camera that shoots the entire page at once without sacrificing quality.
 
Challenges
 
Image Fidelity - Producing reproductions required the closest possible fidelity to the original materials. Getting the color right was the goal. This would lead to the production of printed pieces that had high-quality color in terms of fidelity and printability.
 
Metallic Decoration – Some pages presented extreme photographic challenges because of the metallic elements that are often present including illuminations that have white, gold and silver metallic decoration. To accomplish the capture, standard reprographic methods were supplemented with additional lighting for the metallic page elements. As many as six extra lights are used on a page photograph to bring out the reflective nature of the gilded elements. Even gold metallic paint comes to life with these techniques. In some cases, multiple images of the same page are made with varying lighting techniques and the final image is made by combining the best elements from more than one shot.
 
Results
 
As a result of the digitization process, various reproductions of The Saint John's Bible have had the highest possible fidelity to the original as the technology would allow. Many people in the print production business have the idea that color can be widely adjusted on press. The truth is that only very small adjustments can be made at press time – images need to be "right" from the onset to assure a smooth, consistent print job. The master image files worked on by ArcaSearch/ColorMax were color-matched to the original Bible pages to an uncanny degree. Once these were converted to the appropriate "Asian ink" colorspace, they printed with extreme accuracy, needing only very subtle press adjustments.