Scans of Epson reflective document mats

Over a couple days last summer I made high-resolution scans of 30 reflective document mats attached to the A3 and A4 Epson scanner lids at Leeds Arts University. I believe this accounts for almost all of the scanners at LAU that had mats installed on their lids, across the Mac Suites and various studios throughout the building. On the few occasions a scanner was inoperable, I removed the mat and installed it on a different scanner. All scans were made using identical settings; any visible variation in exposure is due to differences in the age of the scanner bulbs and the mats themselves, some of which have noticeably yellowed over time.

I also made three 600 PPI scans from the photocopiers in the library, but the quality of these files is lower due to poor focus and the copiers supplying compressed PDF files instead of lossless TIFFs. Shame, because these three lids had some of the more interesting paint/ink transfers.

The motivation was to present some of these scans as a record of accumulated layers of artistic endeavour, with the stains and other marks being read as traces of countless students' work passing through these machines over many years. I never got round to doing anything with them so I'm offering these out as a sort of resource pack of textures that people might find useful. They can be used directly as surface detail, or mined as raw material for building custom textures, overlays, or brush libraries.

The full collection of 33 files amounts to 16 GB, with each mat scanned at the highest possible resolution across the entire area of the scanning bed.