The Rijksmuseum, an arts and history museum in Amsterdam, has published an incredibly detailed photograph of The Night Watch boasting a resolution of 717 gigapixels. The team used a 100-megapixel Hasselblad H6D 400 MS-camera to capture 8,439 individual photos of the painting. Artificial intelligence was then used to stitch the whole thing together, resulting in a massive photo featuring 717 billion pixels with a total file size of 5.6 terabytes. The image is four times as sharp as the photograph the museum published in May 2020. In fact, it’s the world’s largest digital image of a piece of art and puts that 195 gigapixel image of Shanghai to shame. Related reading: Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ painting has been restored to its original size thanks to AI The museum said the ultra high-res image will allow scientists to study the painting remotely and the aging process in even greater detail. Even cooler is the fact that it’s available for anyone to view free of charge over on the museum’s website. A version with the missing sides in place is also available. The sheer level of detail here is absolutely astounding.
