A project supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, evaluating current practices in fine art image reproduction and establishing a suggested framework for art image interchange has recently been completed. To determine the image quality currently being achieved, experimentation has been conducted in which a set of objective targets and pieces of artwork in various media were imaged by participating museums and other cultural heritage institutions. Prints made from the delivered image files at the Rochester Institute of Technology on a Heidelberg Speedmaster sheetfed lithographic press and a liquid electrophotographic digital press were used as stimuli in psychometric testing in which observers were asked to evaluate the prints as reproductions of the original artwork. The results indicated that there were limited differences between perceived image quality of printed reproductions made using offset and digital technologies when the transformation of the RGB files into CMYK images was performed following the same standard procedure (ISO 12647). Additional information regarding this experiment and related work may be found at www.artimaging.rit.edu.
Susan Farnand, Franziska Frey, "Perceived Image Quality of Printed Fine Art Reproductions" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP27), 2011, pp 797 - 800, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2011.27.1.art00099_2