Maps, Plans & Posters

We use bespoke, large format, high-resolution planetary scanners and a range of high-resolution cameras, offering non-contact capture of your precious maps, plans and posters. Our equipment can capture single page or double-page spreads creating output formats in TIFF, JPEG (JPEG2000), PDF (PDFA) or any other industry-standard image format you may require. We can also create further surrogate files, such as OCR’d multi-page PDFs, MS Word and eBooks.

All files are captured by our highly trained digitisation technicians using overhead, daylight balanced, non-heat producing lighting, before undergoing a formal quality assurance checking procedure. The final step in the process is the delivery of your electronic files by hard drive.

As standard, TWA survey all material prior to any digitisation project being carried out to ensure that it can withstand the scanning process. If there is evidence of fragility, brittleness, and/or mould, or any other signs of damage to yout maps, plans or posters, then recommendations will be made for how to repair and stabilise the content appropriately.

There are many things that need to be taken into consideration when costing your digitisation project, such as:

• Fragility
• Scale of the collection
• The size of indivdual items
• Any cleaning processes
• Whether items are contained in sleeves

Consequently, it’s impossible to give a definitive answer as to cost, but you can get a rough estimate using our digitisation quote calculator below.

Maps, plans and posters are often largescale items and, as such, they are more prone to damage and tearing. They are also often stored rolled, which means they must follow a relaxation process to ensure they lay flat before capture. They can sometimes be so large that they have to be digitised in parts before being digitally stitched back together again. If any of these steps are not taken then this could impact overall image quality, with a loss to the rich detail contained within, as well as any plans to carry out Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in the future.