# Any way to get these images full resolution from the British Museum? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 24, 2022, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594 "2022-03-24T02:40:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/1 "2022-03-24T02:40:54Z")
There are two scans that I want for my personal, non-commercial use. [https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A\_1881-1210-0-1858](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1881-1210-0-1858) [https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A\_1881-1210-0-1871](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1881-1210-0-1871) Apparently there is supposed to downloadable high resolution copies > **[The British Museum Just Put 1.9 Million Images Online for Public Use](https://petapixel.com/2020/05/01/the-british-museum-just-put-1-9-million-images-online-for-public-use/)** > > Earlier this week, the British Museum made nearly 2 million high-resolution photographs and images of artifacts within their collection available to the But the download link I’m getting is low-resolution (1,000 pixels wide) images with a _massive_ amount of compression artifacting. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/2 "2022-03-24T02:50:26Z")
Looks like they use a progressive download. Every time you zoom in on the image, your browser downloads a higher resolution image. Similar to the method use with Google Earth. The download link only gives you a lower-resolution image. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/3 "2022-03-24T03:45:39Z")
> ## Non-commercial use – Creative Commons licence > > Most images that are © The Trustees of the British Museum are available under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) (Opens in new window)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) licence. > > **Size** > Up to 750 pixels wide (72 dpi) > > - Download images directly from the collection online > - Right-click image and select ’ _Save image as…’_ or ’ _Save picture as…’_ etc. > > Up to 2,500 pixels (300dpi) > > - Request images using the free image service > - Click on ’ _Use image_ ’ under images in [Collection online](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection) > - Images will be sent by email within 24 hours > > **Cost** > There is no cost for the non-commercial use of images. However, the Museum welcomes donations towards the costs of photographing the collection and providing the free image service. [Make a donation](https://www.britishmuseum.org/support-us/donate) > **[Images and photography](https://www.britishmuseum.org/terms-use/copyright-and-permissions/images-and-photography)** > > From sourcing and downloading images to licensing and costs, discover how you can access the British Museum's huge repository. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/4 "2022-03-24T04:11:28Z")
It’s sending these pieces to your browser: [https://media.britishmuseum.org/iiif/Repository/Documents/2014\_10/5\_22/a49b8653\_e774\_4a5d\_95b8\_a3bb0178e078/00386651\_001.ptif/4500,2500,500,500/500,/0/default.jpg](https://media.britishmuseum.org/iiif/Repository/Documents/2014_10/5_22/a49b8653_e774_4a5d_95b8_a3bb0178e078/00386651_001.ptif/4500,2500,500,500/500,/0/default.jpg) I wasn’t easily able to get more than 1000x1000 pieces (the original image is 7048x5310) [https://media.britishmuseum.org/iiif/Repository/Documents/2014\_10/5\_22/a49b8653\_e774\_4a5d\_95b8\_a3bb0178e078/00386651\_001.ptif/500,500,1000,1000/full/0/default.jpg](https://media.britishmuseum.org/iiif/Repository/Documents/2014_10/5_22/a49b8653_e774_4a5d_95b8_a3bb0178e078/00386651_001.ptif/500,500,1000,1000/full/0/default.jpg) plus that’s a JPEG and not the original tiff file anyway, for which you would have to guess the URL… ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/5 "2022-03-24T05:30:45Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > But the download link I’m getting is low-resolution (1,000 pixels wide) If you click “Use this image” in the lower-right, then “Download this image”, you’ll get a better quality version (2500x1877 resolution, 13 MB). Not _fantastic_, but better than the 1000-wide version. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/6 "2022-03-24T08:50:03Z")
The 1000-pixel-wide _is_ what I get with the “use this image” button. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/7 "2022-03-24T08:59:28Z")
And doing it again gives me the 2500 pixel versions. They are only 500-ish KB each, though. Weird. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/8 "2022-03-24T09:33:50Z")
Sorry, you’re right–I was looking at the uncompressed size in my image viewer. It’s really a 572 kB image. Still, it looks reasonably good. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/9 "2022-03-24T09:35:26Z")
This is a screencap of a detail of the image on the site (actual dimensions) compared to the downloadable image (scaled up to match). Huge difference. (I am really mostly interested in small parts of the image, so that matters.) [![](https://i.imgur.com/LTgiBft.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/LTgiBft.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/10 "2022-03-24T09:42:14Z")
Yeah, I get it–I just don’t think they’re releasing anything past 300 dpi for non-commercial use. Decades ago, when Google Maps was in its most primitive form, I wrote a scraper that took semi-obfuscated URLs like what DPRK came up with and then downloaded all of the tiles for a given region. I managed to scrape the entire Bay Area at 1 m resolution before they detected “suspicious” behavior and blocked me. The ban wore off after a while, thankfully. You might be able to do the same manually, but it’ll be a giant pain (about 140 downloads which you have to later assemble). ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/11 "2022-03-24T09:57:58Z")
I’ve done something similar before with a series of scrolls at a Japanese museum site with a similar image window. Hundreds of screen captures per scroll, patched together with Photoshop’s panorama tool. So many I actually had to break them down into regions and combine them all at the end. Done on a 32-bit system that had access to only 2.5 GB of RAM (out of 4 GB, OS limitation). It was days of work. This is a more than 10 year old page (Angelfire is still up!) showing them. I no longer have my password to log on to get rid of that noise at the bottom of the page, which is something that got corrupted/hacked on their end in the Intervening years. [https://www.angelfire.com/d20/darren\_garrison/scrolls.html](https://www.angelfire.com/d20/darren_garrison/scrolls.html) ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/13 "2022-03-24T11:50:32Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > Up to 2,500 pixels (300dpi) > > - Request images using the free image service > - Click on ’ _Use image_ ’ under images in [Collection online](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection) > - Images will be sent by email within 24 hours This seems to be the answer. It’s likely that higher resolution images violate the copyright of the British museum. I’m going to close this thread. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/14 "2022-03-24T11:50:38Z")
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**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2022, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-way-to-get-these-images-full-resolution-from-the-british-museum/961594/15 "2022-03-24T14:13:50Z")
Mod note to @Dr.Strangelove: i removed your post. Please don’t share copyrighted material on the SDMB. That’s a violation of our TOS.