The integration of holography with postage stamps represents one of the more unusual intersections between security printing, applied optics and philately. The new edition of ‘Holography and Philately: Postage Stamps with Holograms’ marks the most authoritative consolidation of this specialised field to date and underscores how innovation in hologram stamps has ebbed and flowed in recent years.

Display holography has always been as much about how it is shown as how it is made. Unlike photography or print, a hologram can’t simply be hung on a wall, leaving the lighting to chance. It must be illuminated, angled and viewed under carefully controlled conditions to reconstruct the recorded wavefront. These physical constraints make the exhibiting of holography as much to do with where it is being shown as it is about what is being shown.

As part of an initiative to define and categorise the visual characteristics that contribute to the ‘WOW factor’ in security holography, Reconnaissance International conducted a global survey of professionals involved in the specification, design, and assessment of holographic security features. The objective was to identify the attributes that are most effective in capturing attention and supporting document authentication across both ID documents and banknotes.

Researchers at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in Korea, operating under the National Research Council of Science and Technology (NST), have developed a field- programmable gate array (FPGA)-based processor capable of converting conventional 2D video into real-time 3D holograms.

US-based Holographix® LLC (a Headwall Group Company), provider of nano and micro-optics solutions, has announced the launch of specialised design services for microlens array (MLA) devices.

Miirage is a new holographic system that brings people, objects and scenes to ‘life’ without the need for external wearables.

It used to be that poor lighting was the major cause of disappointment when it came to viewing holograms. But as the definition of holography has been stretched to include heightened reality displays, so have the number of reasons to be disappointed.

The work of most holographers involves recording or calculating the light reflected from a reflective/absorbent surface or from the internal volume contained within a partially transmissive surface.

For royalists and fans of pageantry around the globe, the Golden Jubilee celebrations for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II promised the perfect occasion for pomp, circumstance and (surprisingly) – holography.

The use of the term ‘holography’ to describe phenomena other than wavefront reconstruction is now well established in the media. Often, the purpose of using the term is to convey a sense of futuristic heightened reality, which can be frustrating to holography purists but could also be seen as praise if you believe the idiom ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’.