Pixar Photoscience Team

Lore & Background

The Pixar Photoscience Division was established in 1979 at Lucasfilm with the express purpose of designing and building a laser recorder/scanner system to input and output film to a computer for compositing and color correction of special effects. In the early years, the team designed color monitoring instrumentation to control the color gamut and gamma of digital images onto 35mm film using a more advanced laser recorder system called PixarVision. Later, at Pixar, the team became responsible for transforming artists' computer-animated images onto film master negatives. Today, the team manages all digital content to a variety of delivery media, including film, DVD, and digital cinema projection.

Reader's Guide

The Pixar Photoscience Team's significance lies in their foundational contributions to the digital film pipeline, bridging the gap between computer-generated imagery and traditional film output. Their development of laser recorder/scanner systems and color monitoring instrumentation allowed for precise control of color and gamma, enabling the compositing and color correction that became essential for modern visual effects and animation. By winning Engineering and Technical Academy Awards and securing numerous patents, the team established technical standards that influenced the entire motion picture industry. Their ongoing work managing digital content across film, DVD, and digital cinema projection underscores their lasting impact on how animated and live-action films are produced and distributed.

Did You Know?

• The team was originally founded in 1979 at Lucasfilm, not at Pixar Animation Studios.
• They designed a laser recorder system called PixarVision for outputting digital images onto 35mm film.
• The team has won Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Scientific and Technical Achievement Awards in 1994 and 1998.
• They hold patents including one for a 'Method and Apparatus for Digitizing Film Using a Stroboscopic Scanning System'.