#Restored Vintage Print

[rockettgraphics]

Restored Audubon Night Hawk print.

[sirfrogsworth]

When I got to this photo in Katrina's collection of vintage family imagery, I was pretty stumped as to how to approach it.

There is a major problem when you zoom in to 100%.

The paper it was developed on has little micro bumps. When it was scanned, the light from the scanner caused a highlight on one side of the bump and a shadow on the other. This causes a pattern which is nearly impossible to eliminate using traditional techniques.

The easiest way to fix this is actually quite clever. You scan it once, then turn it upside down and scan it again. The second pass reverses the side the highlight and shadow appear on, so you can combine the images in Photoshop and blend them together, essentially canceling out the bumps. It's weirdly analogous to noise canceling headphones.

But I don't have access to the physical copy of this image.

So... now what?

Enter Fast Fourier Transform or FFT.

This is a filter that uses extra fancy math to recognize patterns in the image and eliminate them. There is a pretty good filter for Photoshop, but it does not work easily with newer Macs with Apple Silicon. I really did not want to figure that out, and I also was too tired to go downstairs to my PC. However, I learned that a Photoshop competitor, Affinity Photo, has this filter built in. So, I downloaded a trial copy and started the process of trying to figure out how to fix this image.

It was amazingly simple. It brings up these star patterns and you just paint black circles over every one but the center. It literally felt like magic. (Full screen with sound recommended)

So once I did this process I ended up with this...

The paper still had a rough texture but it was much easier to work with using traditional techniques. I started with a black and white conversion and meticulously went through the photo zapping scratches and flaws and balancing tones and sharpening facial features. All of my photo restoration tricks were needed.

I eventually landed here...

I then thought maybe I should match the sepia tone of the original print, so I got to here...

I think the black and white looks nicer in this instance, but I always like having options and this is the most faithful representation of how the photo originally looked.

But there is something else I have been playing around with lately. Photoshop has these experimental neural filters that use cloud processing to do various tricky enhancements. Most of them are in beta and they can be very quirky. But they have a colorizer that tries to detect people and things and adds color to them. Not every black and white photo is a good candidate. I have found these professional portrait photos work decently, but the filter is very hit-and-miss. And there are tools within the filter to help you make a miss more of a hit, but often I have to accept the photo isn't going to work.

But I decided to give it a shot with this one and surprisingly, the colorizer got me most of the way there.

I can work with that.

The one thing it does well is skin. Manually painting color onto skin is tricky and requires more skill and knowledge of traditional painting techniques than I have. But if a filter can do that part for me, I can do the rest.

So after my touchups, I got the image to here.

All I have left to do is my standard color enhancements to make them a little less ghostly and a little more human.

And I present to you where I started and the finished product. I encourage you to flip back and forth.

I'm not sure how, but I was able to go from an image I thought was impossible to edit to a beautiful colorized memory for my best friend's mom. I cannot wait to show her.

[brokehorrorfan]

Robot Monster will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 25 via Bayview Entertainment. Celebrating its 70th anniversary, the movie is presented in frame sequential Blu-ray 3D, anaglyphic 3D, and standard 2D.

Also known as Monsters from Mars and Monsters from the Moon, the 1953 sci-fi horror film is directed by Phil Tucker and written by Wyott Ordung. George Nader, Claudia Barrett, and George Barrows star.

Robot Monster has been newly restored in 4K from 35mm 3D archival elements by the 3-D Film Archive. Special features - some of which are presented in 3D - are listed below, where you can also watch the new trailer.

Versions of the film:

Frame sequential Blu-ray 3D

Anaglyphic 3D (with a pair of glasses included)

Standard 2D

3D special features:

Stardust in Your Eyes - Robot Monster's original prologue starring Trustin "Slick Slavin" Howard

Interview with actor Greg Moffett

Travels Through Time & Space - Vintage slide presentation curated by stereoscopic anthropologist Hillary Hess

Adventures in 3D - 1953 3D comic book

Restoration demo

Vintage shorts

Trailers

2D special features:

Audio commentary by Greg Moffett, Mike Ballew, Eric Kurland, and Lawrence Kaufman.

Saving Slick - Featurette on actor Trustin "Slick Slavin" Howard

Mistakes & Innovations - 3-D Film Archive’s Bob Furmanek describes the original day-for-night footage and Robot Monster’s innovative use of “double film”

Rescuing Ro-Man - Featurette on how the discovery of 35mm prints saved the only complete 3D footage

Memorabilia gallery

Trailers from Hell - Trailer commentary by filmmaker Joe Dante

Bela Lugosi on “You Asked For It” - 1953 live TV appearance

A cosmic catastrophe has wiped out humanity, and now the last six survivors must outwit that strangely iconic alien menace, Ro-Man (George Barrows). Taking orders from the pitiless Great Guidance, Ro-Man wavers in his pursuit of human annihilation when he falls in love with a girl (Claudia Barrett). Can dashing young Roy (George Nader) save her?

[the-full-shakespearience]

He was not of an age, but for all time

Sometimes that famous quote by Ben Johnson about Shakespeare feels more real to me. Shakespeare's work has been hugely popular for over 400 years, and it connects us not just to his time but to all the time in between.

This is a page from from my copy of Macbeth from The Temple Shakespeare. The Temple Shakespeare was a collection of Shakespeare's plays published individually. These little red volumes were published prolifically from 1894 - 1930 (The New Temple Shakespeare was published from 1934 - 1956). They're fairly common in vintage bookstores throughout the English-speaking world. My copy of Macbeth was published in 1896.

One of the previous owners (perhaps the original owner) left their name inside the cover:

It looks to me like the name is Z. R. Stuber (though it could also be E. R. Stuber). There is also a little ticket listing the bookseller, Gilbert and Field at 67 Moorsgate Street, London E.C. The only information I can find about the bookseller is a reference from the Royal Academy of Art. They have a listing for Don Quixote of the Mancha by Edward Abbott Parry that also had a ticket in the front cover for the same bookseller, which they describe only as a book seller in London during the 1890s.

The area of the city that housed this bookshop was heavily bombed during the Second World War, which lead to the widening of London Wall just west of here. Most of the buildings around this address are obviously modern, though this building is either older or was built/restored in an older style.

This is 67 Moorgate today, a store selling designer greeting cards and stationary:

This book went on its own journey for more than 120 years before I acquired it, being bought and sold an unknown number of times before getting here. It is a century older than I am. The people who first printed, sold, and bought it are gone. The store that sold it is gone. The street it was sold on is unrecognizable. The company that published it was bought by another company that was in turn bought, like a matryoshka doll of corporations.

The story inside was already ancient when this was published, and now the world in which it was created is as inaccessible as the Elizabethan Era.

And yet something has endured.

Knowing that other people have shared in these stories with us makes them real like almost nothing else can. Charles I retitled his copy of Much Ado About Nothing. Sylvia Plath annotated her Hamlet. Z. R. Stuber left their name in Macbeth.

This is my copy of Macbeth now, but for how long? Will it outlive me? Will its fragile pages fall apart before I do? Or maybe I'll leave my name in the cover so that one day someone else can try to decipher my handwriting and know that we read the same lines.

[pix4japan]

Restored 1950s Tokyo City Bus

Location: Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, Koganei, Tokyo Timestamp: 13:12 on October 25, 2023

Pentax K-1 II + DFA 28-105mm F3.5-5.6 31 mm ISO 400 for 1/360 sec. at ƒ/8.0

Nestled within the Edo-Tokyo Open-Air Architectural Museum lies a fascinating piece of history—a meticulously restored vintage bus, the TS11 model, built by Isuzu Motors after the war from 1952. As you explore the museum, you'll come across this relic, which I feel is just one testament of many to Japan's post-war resilience and innovation.

The bus in my photo is actually part of a personal collection that is on loan to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for use at the museum. This is why when you receive your printed English guide at the museum, there will be no reference or information available regarding the bus. Please read on to learn some interesting facts and history!

The TS11 model, with its 4WD capability, played a small but influential role in post-war Japan. Its sturdy design allowed it to navigate even the most challenging terrains, including mountainous and snowy regions. In 1957, a similar bus was entrusted with the honor to transport the Emperor and Empress to Mt. Fuji for a climb to the summit, a testament to the reliability and trustworthiness of the bus.

Fast forward to the present day, vintage buses, like the TS11, are experiencing a revival, thanks to the efforts of rural bus operators. Newspaper articles from The Asahi Shimbun and The Mainichi highlight labor shortage struggles faced by bus operators who have turned to restoring old buses as a way to promote not only ridership from tourists on weekends and national holidays, but also to attract bus enthusiasts (bus spotters, bus otaku, etc.) as possible new hires at their companies.

The charm of these buses transcends generations, captivating both the young and old in Japan and even tourists from overseas who have become familiar with the retro design of these old buses from novels, anime, and manga.

If you examine my photo closely, you'll notice a replica of an old license plate near the radiator grill. Above the front window, you can also see the bus route number “47” (四七) and the route destination “Ueno-Hirokoji” (上野広小路), which is a subway station on the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, in Taito Ward, Tokyo.

Unlike modern buses designed for maximum passenger capacity, these vintage buses, with engines positioned in front of the driver, offer several advantages: better engine cooling efficiencies, easier access for maintenance and repairs, reduced vibration and noise for passengers, and increased safety for drivers in frontal collisions.

Preserving these vintage buses not only honors Japan's history but I think they can help enrich the present and the future, connecting young and old through shared memories and appreciation for cool design and innovative engineering.

Visit my blog post for Google Maps links and links to all of the original source material that I translated for this post: https://www.pix4japan.com/blog/20231025-edo-bldg-museum.

[vizcart]

From the 1960s, a (restored) school geological map of Pennsylvania, obviously with shaded relief!

🗺️ 𝗠𝗔𝗣 𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢 Geologic map of Pennsylvania, Topographic and Geologic Survey, Commonwealth of PA, 1960. Source: David Rumsey Collection.

If you like our work, want to see our daily updates (or want to say hello to our studio), consider to follow our Instagram or Twitter account. Otherwise if are interested in our prints or have a custom request check our shop.

[zaphffayrkunialofphinsfable]

clothing for y'all alternatives pt. 10

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[thethirdromana]

Ten modern Dracula covers, rated

(by request of @mysticalspiders on my previous post of older covers)

A poor start from Penguin Classics, who seem to have confused their Dracula with their Nosferatu for this 2006 edition. Piddling little castle too. 2/10.

I had to look at this 2013 Vintage Children's Classics edition several times before I realised that their Dracula does not, in fact, have a man-bun. I'm a bit disappointed, and also adjusting the contrast settings on my laptop. 7/10, hope this unabridged edition leaves the children suitably traumatised.

Fair warning, we're going to see a lot of covers from assorted Penguin imprints - this is the 2003 audiobook (read by Richard E Grant, which sounds delightful) but the print edition had the same cover. It's Love and Pain by Edvard Munch, also known - not by him - as Vampire. Gains points for thematic relevance, loses them again for not depicting a specific scene in the book. 6/10.

I like this (Penguin Vintage Classics, 2011). It's subtle, it's a little bit sexy. It has the confidence that the reader knows what Dracula is about (after all, who doesn't?) and will put things together for themselves. 8/10.

More Penguin Vintage Classics, this time from 2007 (I did warn you). I'm getting strong vibes of the 2020 BBC Dracula, and the less said about that the better. 3/10.

OK. I might need to be a bit petty here. I get what they were going for at Modern Library Classics in 2002, I really do, BUT I do need to note that Lucy did not wear a crucifix on her choker. (She wore a diamond buckle, given to her by Arthur). She very much did not wear a crucifix on her choker. The story might have gone rather differently had she worn a crucifix on her choker. 4/10.

I'm a bit conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I like Edward Gorey, whose Dracula stage designs illustrate this 2021 Sterling edition. On the other hand, I'm not at all sold on the wings, and my favourite Edward Gorey illustrations are his wolves, e.g. in his cover for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. There are wolves in Dracula, there could have been wolves here. 7/10, would have been 9/10 if it had wolves.

The art style on this Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (by Ruben Toledo, 2010) reminds me a great deal of the art style of a girl I had a crush on when I was at school. So it gets extra points for bringing back happy memories. And it needs those points, because otherwise Dracula-as-Edward-Scissorhands is decidedly Not For Me. 3/10.

I mean it does the trick, doesn't it? Nothing to write home about, nothing to complain about. Except that this is a Collins Classroom Classics 2021 edition - for the A-level set text, no less. Can you imagine hoofing this back and forth from your house to your locker to your classroom, every day for a term or more? Can you imagine how revolting this off-white cover would eventually become from months-long exposure to school desks and teenagers' rucksacks? No thank you. 4/10.

It's BLUE!! Thank you, Puffin Clothbound Classics (2019), for finally providing an end to the monotony of red and red-tinted Dracula covers. There are a lot of covers that follow the castle-and-bats motif, and I haven't included most of them to keep this from getting samey. But imagine having the strength and courage to say no to the endless tyranny of red and make it blue. BlueBLUEblueblueblue. I feel refreshed, I feel restored. 20/10.

[meeedeee]

Help Restore Vintage Starsky & Hutch Inspired Fic

flamingo needs help proofing mimeograph era fanfiction written by two popular Starsky and Hutch fan writers: Terri Becket and Chris Powers. The Vas and Dex universe was an early example of fandom inspired original m/m fanfic. Beckett and Power were enamored of "Starsky and Hutch" when it was airing, but they were "fans in isolation"--not knowing that fandom existed. They decided to write their own stories, which they based on Starsky and Hutch. The two authors kept writing Vas & Dex even after they discovered Starsky & Hutch fandom. At that point, the two original characters had taken on a life of their own. Since the originals were printed on mimeo paper, the OCR conversion is iffy in spots (example below). You can work at your own pace. DM or email me: morgandawn@gmail.com Original

Text: Th® hall echoed with the voices of all nSao hundred odd recruit® taking the® oath of service as PaitJolaen on probation with the Los Angeles Police Department, 

 Two hours later, with • now uniform, a badge, a gun, end a room* number apiece, they wore turned loose to get themselves stscdshtaaed out, find their way around, and get to know those detailed to Join the same classes and share the snail, tain-bunked rooms,

Vastarnyi, Angeleno born and bred, figured he already knew his surroundings, and he had things to pick up from his room above the hardware store before moving into the room that would be home for the next thirteen weeks. He headed for the parking lot and his motor¬cycle. It was a Harley Davidson, or had been) by now the manufacturers might have had difficulty recognising their bastardised child. The machine had been stripped down and tuned up so many times by a succes¬sion of enthusiastic owners, each with his own idea of what the bike should look like, that it now bore little resemblance to the original model

[agent-scotch]

{ very pleased currently - i finally completed a restoration of some vintage Hong Kong comic books and bound them 🥰🥰 it’s like preserving a bit of nostalgia and very excited for my parents to see.

I scanned, fixed and printed new covers before chopping off the old binding and rebound the original pages with the new covers. }

[sirfrogsworth]

Photo Restoration: Adventures in Upscaling - Part 1

After finishing my big photo restoration for Katrina's family I was organizing my files and noticed a scan I missed.

The scan was fairly low resolution and the photos were only 400x700 pixels.

But I was bored and restoring photos helps me relax, so I decided to fix them up anyway—even if they did not have great fidelity.

I did my thing, and it worked pretty well.

But I have been interested in a set of photo tools made by Topaz Labs. They are known for their noise removal and upscaling apps and are praised by many photographers I follow.

Before I jumped into this A.I. suite of tools I wanted to make sure it was trained ethically with licensed images—same as how Adobe operates.

So that made me feel better about that aspect. Plus I feel this is exactly the kind of thing A.I. is great for. A tool to help artists rather than displace them.

I have used a few upscalers in the past and have had varying degrees of success. Typically they just implore various sharpening tools and try to control the chunky artifacts with denoising tools—trying to find the best balance between the two.

Two opposites trying to reach a compromise.

But I was not expecting the results I got. This is way beyond anything I have ever tried before and I had no idea the technology had improved this much.

Here are the results...

All photos will be displayed in order of original, my edit, Topaz upscale followed by extremely zoomed in crops to help you better see the effects.

Crops...

Topaz has a specific "face recovery" algorithm and I was curious if these results were only because of that.

But then I looked at this little guy and he seemed pretty sharp as well.

I was stunned at how well this was working. I was able to upscale these photos so they could be printed as an 8x10 with 300ppi resolution.

Maybe that first photo was just a fluke, so I proceeded with the others.

Santa's face was mostly obscured, but it was still able to work its magic despite that.

Crops...

At this point I felt like I was a caveman discovering fire for the first time.

This next photo is interesting because it has a very creepy clown clearly plotting to kill baby Katrina. And the clown has on full makeup, which could confuse the face recovery.

Crops...

The clown face looked great, but there were two interesting artifacts involving text.

First, there was not nearly enough information on the clown's button. So the A.I. did its thing and rendered nonsense. I found a smiley face button and just did some classic compositing.

There was also a bottle of Elmer's glue on the table and even though I felt there was enough detail to make out the words, the A.I. still struggled. So I found a bottle of vintage glue with the same label and replaced it.

And it kinda feels nice that A.I. can't do everything yet and I still have to use my problem solving skills to make the best photo possible.

On to part 2!

[artworksstore]

This is a digitally remastered and enhanced reproduction. It is based on the 1891 lithograph produced by the Morning News in Savannah, GA. The original copy contained signs of wear and tear, discoloration, small rips, and stains. Some minor imperfections remain. However, the completed print’s restoration presents a colorful characterization of life in Savannah, Georgia in 1891. The map features over 100 places of business, public buildings, railroads, canals, parks, and churches. Small insert images at the top and bottom include the Board of Trade Building, the Chatham County Court House, the historic De Soto Hotel, Guckenhelmer & Sons Wholesale House, and Altmeyer & Co's. Dry Goods Store. The original artist was German-born Augustus Koch. Kotch served in the Engineers Office of the Wisconsin Infantry during the Civil War as draftsman, and then later as an officer. He was a prolific artist producing a number of bird’s eye view illustrations.

[naikismanipulatedimage]

Pictures or it didn’t happen By Mike Chopra Grant

Week 3

In this text, the idea of digital photo filters on social media is explored.

Nathan Jurgenson states “ Faux vintage photo is an attempt to create a sort of nostalgia for the present” expressing that with a retro filter, digital photos evoke more importance and realism. To investigate this idea, Grant examines the value of a digital photograph in comparison to vintage photographs, which inherently seem to feel more significant. 

Viewing vintage photographs like pictures of my grandparents in their 20′s, or images from before photography became accessible, makes me impulsively want to take as many photos on my phone as I can to preserve my present life. However, I had a realisation that the reason why those older photographs felt important, was because of their scarcity. My extensive camera roll and photos taken in an instance, will not become those of value like how my grandparent’s photos had become. Grant expresses this phenomenon of instant digital photography to be ‘Devaluating each individual image’.Furthermore, Grant expresses digital photographs to be ‘immaterial’ as they only exist in ‘digital files’. Digital photographs are not fondly looked back at, as much as physical printed photos. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for the rise in popularity of Polaroid cameras or retro filters in post modern times. 

For technological generation, we find retro filters to be appealing as they evoke a “generalised aura of pastness” with the ‘distressed frame’ and ‘light leaks’, as it contrasts to the format of a generic digital photograph, making it feel special. Svetlana  Boym describes this idea of making present photographs have the feeling of nostalgia without the existence of a real experience, as “restorative nostalgia” 

“Filters that make the present look like artifacts of a somewhat distant past imbue that present with a greater aura of materiality and authenticity” 

and that retro filters or the nostalgic impulse create a “textualization of mundane experience“ because of the  “existential crisis of the self in postmodernism”, implying that our desire for nostalgia stems from the issue of identity in the post modern era. 

[vizcart]

Explore the mesmerizing beauty of Antarctica through this exquisite shaded relief map, digitally restored by Vizart Studio. Capturing the stunning terrain of the icy continent, this vintage map from 1986. ❄️🌍

Map info:

Antarctica, McDoland Islands and Heard Island and Macquarie Island. 1986. Division of National Mapping of Australia.

Source: University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

If you like our work, want to see our daily updates (or want to say hello to our studio), consider to follow our Instagram or Twitter account. Otherwise if are interested in our prints or have a custom request check our shop.

[icarus-suraki]

Talking in a Discord server about Morse code and ham radio and the NATO alphabet and numbers stations and I'm getting all nostalgic about my childhood and my dad's radio shenanigans...

He's a ham radio guy and it was a regular thing to help him rig up a new antenna--usually held up on ropes in the trees in the backyard; we called it "Dad's rope dance." But it was cool to sit with him when he'd play around with his radios--and he learned Morse code for the lulz. He'd help us make crystal radios out of paper towel tubes. He'd let us get on the radio for laughs, especially if someone else had their kid on there with them. (He doesn't do ham radio so much anymore; he's taken to restoring vintage and antique radios now--along with 3d printing, astronomy, building his own telescope, and model shipbuilding.)

But what I really remember is going to the beach with my family and my dad would bring along a world band radio and a VLF receiver. The VLF receiver we'd bring out early to try and hear the dawn chorus or the sound of lightning over the horizon. The world band radio would come out at night and I so clearly remember staying in this 1970s-style beach place my dad's friend had a timeshare in and playing with the radio. The screen door was open and you could hear the ocean in the dark and my dad, my brother, and I were sitting in the main room of this place, just scanning through and looking for numbers stations (which my dad said were something spies used, though my understanding of spies at the time was basically Boris and Natasha). It worked best at night: you could get things from farther away at night, like with AM radio.

A lot of people find numbers stations creepy but to me they sound like summer nights at the beach.

And my dad gave me a weather radio and a world band radio to bring with me when I moved into my own place. Because that's just important stuff to have.