Color Correction in 3D Digital Documentation: Case Study

Digital documentation of cultural heritage requires high quality spatial and color information. However the 3D data accuracy is already sufficiently high for many applications, the color representation of surface remains unsatisfactory. In this paper we describe issues encountered during 3D and color digitization based on a real-world case study. We focus on documentation of the King’s Chinese Cabinet at Wilanow Palace (Warsaw, Poland). We show the scale of the undertaking and enumerate problems related to high resolution 3D scanning and reconstruction of the surface appearance despite object gloss, uneven illumination, limited field of view and utilization of multiple light sources and detectors. Our findings prove the complexity of cultural heritage digitization, justify the individual approach in each case and provide valuable guidelines for future applications.