1,300 Beautiful Wildlife Illustrations from the 19th Century Now Restored(www.openculture.com)
138 pointsby gslin10 hours ago17 comments
  • ilt3 hours ago
    Direct link to the library instead of the blog: https://www.c82.net/naturalists-library/
  • xtiansimonan hour ago
    I guess the original author is Sir William Jardine, 7th Baronet (1800-1874)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_William_Jardine,_7th_Baron...

  • NetMageSCW42 minutes ago
    I don’t need another large book to put on my bookshelf that I don’t have time to read, especially one at this price, but I want one.

    OTOH, I have had a couple of book/apps on the iPad that were very nice, The Elements (still available) and one with items from MOMA (unfortunately removed from the App Store). That would be a cheaper way to distribute a book like experience.

    • Foobar856821 minutes ago
      In France, we have https://citadelles-mazenod.com/ and they publish large and gorgeous books... If only I had the Space to buy them. I bought a few when they were on sales, so two digits instead of 3 was good, but some limited and even larger are often > 500€. And not having the space to buy some of these kills me.
  • zkmon3 hours ago
    Colors appear to be added by the restoration process. This kills originality of the works. I would prefer to see an artwork as it was created, not "enhanced" in anyway.
  • Ylanoan hour ago
    In some ways, publishing this provenance is as valuable as publishing the cleaned illustrations
  • digikazi5 hours ago
    I'm assuming it is quite nice, but terrible adverts popping up all over the place and distracting from the overall experience, so I only skimmed through it before I closed the window (on a work computer hence no adblock!)

    Here's something similar from The Guardian, but without the ads:

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/18/natural-...

    • Flow4 hours ago
      If you’re on iOS, get Wipr adblocker. The page was very clean för me. No ads.
  • a_c3 hours ago
    Slightly off topic, anyone know of any good dinosaur illustration, ideally a large collection?
  • digg99an hour ago
    Colors may or may not be true to the original artist, but these are beautiful. Well done!
  • noduerme6 hours ago
    Unclear from the text: Was AI used in modifying or filling any images in the restoration process?
    • Cthulhu_5 hours ago
      More at https://www.c82.net/blog/making-of-naturalists-library, you can see that the source material was actually in pretty good condition, just aged and yellowed; they used Photoshop's AI to stitch drawings that were spread out over two pages together. And probably some upscaling.
      • ZeroGravitas2 hours ago
        That link has a big section on their use of AI that ends with:

        > Overall, AI played a critical role in many aspects of this project for things I couldn’t do myself but the vast majority of the work was done manually the “old fashioned way” from creating the design and writing the code to restoring each plate and formatting all the text to designing the book and posters. I have no doubt that a lot more could have been done with AI but I still enjoy putting in the elbow grease to create something just the way I want.

    • smallnix6 hours ago
      > Not only did AI tools then help him unearth need­ed sources and fill in visu­al gaps

      I think that's clear

      • noduerme6 hours ago
        I took that to mean filling in the gaps on the source data, not literally filling in pen and ink gaps in the drawing. If so, that's a shame. It pollutes the original and isn't what counts as restoration.
  • yaur6 hours ago
    Can someone build a classifier that will tell is which of these images was drawn with a living, dead, or (charitably) dissected specimen?
  • asd000hh3 hours ago
    wow beautiful!
  • Animats7 hours ago
    Soon to be ingested for AI training.
  • ButlerianJihad6 hours ago
    Remember when it was totally controversial that Ted Turner intended to colorize classic films such as Casablanca, and how technology was going to ruin artistry in this way? Good times.
    • nephihaha4 hours ago
      I don't like most of the colourisations of old films. I try and seek out the black and white versions when I can. B&W is a different medium from colour.
  • zuluworks5 hours ago
    [dead]
  • aaron6953 hours ago
    [dead]