Where do you find large collections of hi res art? Old masterpieces and more modern pieces? Extra points if I can find stashes of hi res versions of NFTs that other people were silly enough to buy.
Google Cultural Institute is just plain awesome. SUPER high res photos that let you zoom in to your heart's content. Right now in the front page you can color in hokusai's great wave. You can explore lots of famous museums using google street view. It's really incredible and totally free.
If you want to bulk save high res artwork of artists, not sure tbh. I'm certain there's a way to download the high res images on GCI though
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/dance-at-le-moulin-de-la-galette/rQEx7CtGiKE3yg
here's a good example. You can zoom way in and see the impasto brushstrokes and even the canvas behind it. What's weird is that this version seems way darker than any other pictures you may find online. Not sure what's up with that as it appears they took great care to make the photo
Yes, well aware of this and it is pretty awesome.
I would be interested to know more about how to download these though as,
#1 - anything Google is fleeting, it's only some amount of time before these disappear
And #2 - I want the freedom to print these in large format or display them digitally on large screens / projectors.
Totally agree, who knows when Google will pull the plug. I don't see this being very profitable for them. I already have a favorite artwork that's been removed, Two Sisters by Renoir. There's no legal reason I can imagine that they'd have to take it down so it'd have to do with ongoing deals they have with museums.
And that sounds like a cool project. Take a look at this:
At the top there's a browser extension and a desktop application. You can enter a url from google cultural institute and it'll request each image that constitutes the whole.
Dezoomify is the most recently updated. I believe with a script, you'd be able to create a list of artworks you want full prints of and have it download them one by one.
I've seen ipfs links before, but is there a good way to browse this? Let's say I see something I like on opensea and want the full res image. How do I get the ipfs link to download this?
There's the ipfs link of the image in the description of the nft, and just in the contract
(Probably to open it you would need an ipfs support in your browser or a plugin)
Also, just for browsing, i'm sure there are apps that let you explore ipfs nicely