Bible Scholars at the University of Southern California have been putting their training in Photoshop in amazing use: Photoshop is helping them analyze the Dead Sea Scrolls. The director of the Western Semitic Research Project (WSRP) of the USC, Dr. Bruce Zuckerman, said that Adobe Photoshop CS2 "is fundamental to our ability to unlock the history of the old past ".
This is not the first time that archaeologists use their training in Photoshop to combine fragments of old documents that are stored in museums and libraries in different parts of the world. Photoshop CS2 allows scholars and archaeologists to arm these fragments in the form of digital puzzles, allowing researchers to study whole scrolls or papyrus rolls for the first time.
Some of the original inscriptions are too small to be seen at all. Using Photoshop CS2, archaeologists can build larger composite images from the smaller original images. And it is impossible to see much original writing today because the ink has faded or the material in which it is written has darkened too much. By using ultraviolet and infrared imaging techniques, researchers can retrieve ink traces and read the original document.
As soon as the Zuckerman team has a good photo of an old document, it is scanned and digitally enhanced with Photoshop CS2. Think of unlimited possibilities; Once the image is scanned and improved, it can be freely distributed and shared online with researchers and scholars from around the world. It's amazing to think what that means for the whole profession: there is no archaeologist or biblical scholar in the world today who does not need advanced training in Photoshop to reach their full potential.
The West Semitic research project at the USC has published online tutorials for using Photoshop CS2 as a tool for academic research. This is a fascinating web page that introduces academics to all the basics of Photoshop: How to use tools, how to reduce and expand images on the screen, how to draw inscriptions with routes, how to paint paths, how to copy paths and how to copy Drawings.
Thanks to Adobe Photoshop CS2, archaeologists can now decipher documents that no one has been able to read for hundreds of years. Even the writings and inscriptions that are believed to have been deciphered and interpreted long ago are open to new research: scholars can begin to find mistakes in the original research by people who work with Hard-to-see inscriptions.
It's amazing to think about what this means: a single letter can change the way we look at history. When I started playing with Photoshop in the early 1990, I would never have thought I had a tool in my hands that could someday change the way people understand themselves. What an exciting time to be alive, and Photoshop training makes it even more exciting. Sign up for Photoshop training today. No matter what field you are in, Photoshop training is one of the best investments you'll ever make.
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