Wove paper analysis through texture similarities

Wove paper, made on a papermaking screen or mold having a surface of smooth tightly woven wires, was the predominant paper type used for printing in the twentieth century. To aid in the study and classification of fine art prints on wove paper, the present work compares the results of five different image processing approaches for characterizing surface texture. Using a collection of popular wove papers, a reference dataset of raking light close-up images was assembled. Five research teams undertook their own processing strategies to detect affinities among the paper samples. Their success in identifying similarity groupings are reported.