High-Quality Voynich Manuscript Images

Yale's Beinecke Library has now made high-quality color images of the Voynich Manuscript available on their website! The images are about 500 dpi and 24-color. A million thanks to the Beinecke and Yale University for this superb gift to all students of the Voynich Manuscript! These images are in LizardTech's proprietary MrSID format; tools for using these are linked below.

Print Publication - These images have been PUBLISHED IN PRINT in France in a high-quality color edition, with a preface in French by Pierre Barthélémy, as Le Code Voynich (Paris, Jean-Claude Gawsewitch, 2005.) ISBN: 2350130223. A million thanks to Gawsewitch and Barthélémy for this historic first! This book is available from:

Amazon (France) (this site is in French,)
FNAC (France) (this site is in French,) and
Amazon (Canada) (this site in English.) (Online Translator by WorldLingo will help with the French-language sites.)

Browsing the Images Online - The new Voynich Manuscript images can be accessed at this link: Beinecke Library Digital Collections Database.

To use the "zoom" feature, you will need one of the browser plugins linked below.
Lower quality but smaller JPG images are indicated as 4x and 8x.

Missing MrSID - Only one folio, f72r3, currently lacks an MrSID. Here is a link to a B&W photonegative JPG image of f72r3 on the Beinecke site. The MrSID image of one other folio, f72v3, is partly obscured by a fold in the vellum. Here is a link to a B&W photonegative JPG image of f72v3 on the Beinecke site.
Batch Downloads of All the Images - To download the images directly in a batch, use this text list of links to the MrSID files with a download manager, such as:

Wackget for Windows,
iGetter for Windows and Mac,
Caitoo for Linux, and
GNU Wget for most systems.

Smaller JPGs - There are also JPG files which are much smaller and quite satisfactory for browsing. Here is a text files with the links to the 8x JPG files , as well as an MS-DOS script and a Linux script to rename the JPG files to the customary folio numbers for the VMs.
Folio numbers - You will want to relate Yale's catalog numbers for the MrSID image files to the folio numbers customarily used in the study of the VMs.

Here are scripts for Windows and for Linux to convert the MrSID files' names to the proper folio numbers.
René Zandbergen has a table of folio numbers with the corresponding Beinecke catalog image number.
Nick Pelling's Voynich conversion page converts the Beinecke identification numbers into the Voynich Manuscript's folio numbers, although it is not up to date with all the latest images.

Batch Printing - One way to print batches of these images is to make PDF's of them. Here are directions to do this.
Programs for Viewing MrSIDs - Here are several freeware programs to view the high-quality images in LizardTech's proprietary Mr-SID format. (Online Translator by WorldLingo can help with the Dutch (nl), French (fr), and Japanese (jp) language sites listed below.)


Program	Windows	Mac	Linux
Express View browser plugin	LizardTech PCW Mr-SID site	LizardTech - Safari with Mac OS X 10.2 or later LizardTech - OS 9.1; problems reported with Netscape, though not IE (jp) PCW Mr-SID site - PowerMac	PCW Mr-SID site
XnView - excellent viewer, good interface but slow, available for most systems	XnView	XnView	XnView
IrfanView -excellent, popular viewer, most control over printing; must have latest plugins	IrfanView
GeoViewer - ("GeoSID") - an old LizardTech viewer, small and some map viewing	Saharas - click on "Visualizez et decoupez les photo satellite ZULU-NIMA avec GeoSID" (fr)
ImageVisu - minimal but fast and simple, some GIS files	GeoVisu
TatukGIS - viewer, also good as GIS viewer , fast, has "print to PDF" feature	TatukGIS
ERDAS View Finder - viewer, large but fast, excellent rendering of images, some map viewing, cannot print anything	Leica Geosystems
Geomatica FreeView - GIS viewer	Geomatica
ActiveX control	Dutch site (nl)
Photoshop plugin	Dutch site (nl)	Dutch site (nl)
LizardTech's standalone MrSID viewer, small and fast	LSU LOC MrSID site Dutch site (nl)	LOC MrSID site - OS 9.x Dutch site (nl)
Graphic Converter – viewer, shareware, must have MrSID plugin		Lemkesoft
QuarkXpress plugin		Dutch site (nl)
gvSIG - viewer, also full GIS, needs Java and add-ons, available in English	gvSIG		gvSIG
mrsiddecode utility to change MrSIDs into TIFFs or JPGs (JPGs of degraded quality, though) -script with Beinecke catalog numbers -script with VMs folio numbers	LizardTech		LizardTech (help notes for this)
mrsid_retrieve - command line utility to change MrSIDs into TIFFs, etc.			dlxs
Wine (to use Windows programs on x-86 Linux systems)			Wine

If you have any questions, contact tsalagi atasus dot net .

July 2, 2006.

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