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[OtherEric]

JVJ, Geo, and I were having a bit of a discussion of how much clean-up of scans was appropriate.  I asked Jim if I could repeat what we had here, since I think it's a good discussion and very much worth talking about.  Looking forward to what others think.

JVJ's original posts:

Hi, Geo (and OtherEric who's getting copied on this)
I just saw cover to Strange Worlds #22 on the site and was wondering what the general site preferences were for adjusting the colors. I've NEVER been a fan of the "Chip Kidd" school of making anything LOOK old and I don't want disparage what you've done, Geo, but I found the cover to be too yellowed. Does my book really look like that, or is it a limit of your equipment or your experience or your tools? What I want to make certain of is that it is NOT a deliberate attempt to maintain or add the "aging" look.

Again, no criticism is being applied here, but my preferences are for something like:
which is just your file run through the levels filter in Photoshop. Now, I understand that you don't have Photoshop, but if you, too, prefer the whiter, more contrasted version above, perhaps I can send you the disk for Photoshop Elements when it comes back from OtherEric. It's only a minute or so to make the color corrections on each page (maybe even only 30 seconds), but it makes me feel like I'm looking at a brand new comic book instead of a faded old piece of junk - which I freely admit IS what most of my comics are.

I was playing around today with an issue of Jack in the Box and here is a comparison of a page before and after my color adjustments. My question to you both is, what is the consensus of the GAC site users as to the preferred color on the scans. Heck, I own the comics, so I don't care. I can look at them any time, but the folks who download these things (i.e. you guys) must have a preference.

Curious minds want to know.

http://www.bpib.com/temp/StramgeWorlds22.jpg
http://www.bpib.com/temp/JitB-color-test.jpg

My response:

I can only speak for myself, but I would NEVER try to deliberately age a book, or even maintain an aged look.  But making the page ultra-white, like JVJ's example of the Jack in the Box, is going a bit too far in my opinion.  The paper the books were originally printed on was never that bright, even when brand new; and the colors wind up being slightly washed out compared to the original.  Part of this may very well be my monitor and settings, which is of course part of the problem in knowing just how far to go.

The goal is to make the book look like it did when it was new, not like it would look as a new book now.  For my tastes, most of what Geo does looks almost exactly like what I think a scan should look like.  (Another one of my editing heroes would be Cimmerian32.)  I think JVJ's version of the Strange Worlds #22 cover does look better than Geo's, but I think that was one of the outliers in terms of process rather than Geo having the incorrect basic ideal.  It's easy (at least for me) to forget that the cover is on different paper stock and should be treated somewhat differently, and the white cover shows age worse than other covers might.  Of course, the cover is the first thing people see:  how the cover looks makes a big first impression, just like it would on a real book.  I've got at least a few scans where I pulled a cover from Heritage just to help 'sell' a lower grade book I've scanned.

This is all just my opinion.  If neither of you mind, I would like to copy this thread over to main forums and throw it open to everybody.  I've seen some very brief discussion of the subject, but never seen an all-out thread.  This is something very worth discussing; I want my scans to appeal to the maximum number of people.  Let me know if you're OK with that.

JVJ's response:

Point taken, Eric,
so I've added a third option into the link. It's just a few tweaks in the adjustment layers in PS (I LOVE adjustment layers - you can change just about anything and then three days later you can change it all back again!). If you think this is a valid topic, by all means post it. I will only comment on the premium that Golden and Silver Age collectors will pay for WHITE pages! It's quite possible to make a 4th version of the file with white background of the 3rd and the rich colors of the middle sample. I'm basically throwing things together in my "spare" time and not working very hard at any of these. So please don't consider them to be my favorites - they were intended to illustrate the question, not suggest a solution.

Speaking for myself, I like the middle version the best and would be very happy if I can teach myself to edit books to something close to that.  While I know that a whiter background would be possible, I think getting much brighter wouldn't translate that well to the computer screen.  Or possibly translate TOO well; it starts to lose the feel of a comic book and becomes a digital image.  That is probably a purely aesthetic choice on my part, I'm really curious to hear what others think.

[Geo (R.I.P.)]

I'll post the original scan which had no setting or color corrections changes when I originally scanned it.

Original scan (saved as a jpg and sized down from the original tiff) Please note the "texture" of the paper on the cover on the "white" part if you enlarge it to full size (I've never seen that before on the cover paper, it's looks almost like they didn't color it at all):


I do have to agree that it is washed out on the colors, I didn't want to do a lot of color corrections with it as I'm hoping to pass all the covers I scanned over to Cimm32 to redo them, like he did with Strange Worlds #01 cover, (he's working on another Strange Worlds cover as we speak here). But I do think your cover looks better then the one I did Jim. You can change the cover to the file if you want, I have no problem with that. I'm not a master and will probably never be, but I'm always trying to learn more.

I do like to keep the original light brown (the news-print color) on the inside pages so they look as much as they originally did and not over "white" them, but only brighten the colors some, but that's just me.

Also I do have a disk with Photoshop Elements 4.0 on it, but haven't tried the program yet, it came with the new scanner I bought. I'll have to give it a try now.

Geo

[JonTheScanner]

I too much prefer the middle.  I know my own editing usually ends up between that and too white probably.

[Yoc]

I too feel the middle cover is the better.

[JVJ]

Here's your scan run through [image][adjustments][levels][auto], Geo.
http://www.bpib.com/temp/StrangeWorlds22-auto.jpg
It took ten seconds. And you're right, the pure "white" of that cover is pretty unique. The coloring was actually done by Everett Raymond Kinster - and I used that image in my book.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[JonTheScanner]

Let me add one thing here.  Sometimes with very yellowed comics there is almost nothing you can do.  If you remove all the yellowing of the paper, the colors are just too blue.  We have to face it that comics were meant as throwaway items and have outlived there expected life at 50+ years.

Interestingly some of the very early 40s comics (particularly Dells in my experience) are better than late forties and early 50s.  I assume the war-time paper shortages also led to using a lesser grade paper in the comics.

[JVJ]

I think you can actually work around that, Jon. The paper is actually a more neutral color than the yellow ink, and you can leverage off of that to increase the contrast of the blue channel before messing with neutralizing the tan. If you want to talk about it someday, call me when you're at the computer and we can play around.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[cimmerian32]

Cover whites should be white...  I like the middle version of the interior paper...  interior paper that is edited to Too-white is called bleaching...  it creates an unnatural looking contrast with the colors matrix as it was designed to be off-set against newsprint...  the "white pages" that command premiums amongst collectors is relative to the paper quality...  modern Baxter paper is true white, 1987-era DC's "New Format" paper is inbetween newsprint and Baxter...  newsprint itself is 3 or 4 shades darker than true white, but still considered "white" in a comic grade, as it is the original colour...  none of the comics on this site ever originally had actual white paper.

[JVJ]

I agree with everthing you said, cimmerian32,
and I'll only make two comments:

1. as a publisher, I can introduce you to some printers who will take up your entire day defining "white" for you.

2. I'm not an artist, but my considered opinion is that NO serious comic book artist WANTED his art to be printed on tanned newsprint with faded colors. It's what they were given, but there is not a shred of evidence that it's what they preferred. And the colorists weren't concerned with the color of the newsprint, they were simply creating mixes of tints - probably none of which ever looked like they envisioned.

Our preference for muted colors on yellowing paper is an historical bias and should be accepted as such. You're right, it doesn't look "natural" but who's to say that Harold Delay might not have jumped for joy if he'd ever seen the third version in my example.

[rez]

Hey, now this is getting good!

Food for thought for sure.

[OtherEric]

I recall seeing interviews with color artists back in the 80's explaining how they had to adjust their techniques for the new papers and printing that were coming in then.  So I'm sure that some colorists were concerned with the color of the newsprint and were adapting to what they had to work with.  I'm also fairly certain this became far more common in books that came out later than the ones we can scan for the site; if I recall correctly lots of the coloring on older books was at best an afterthought.  (Marie Severin was the first colorist ever credited for her work, wasn't she?  I'm not sure I ever saw it, but I heard she got one of the bio pages they ran in some of the EC's way back when.)

[JVJ]

There's no doubt that colorists had to alter their palettes in the 70s & 80s when the paper in comic books changed, but I guess I should have prefaced my remarks with an explanation that I was talking about the Golden Age (which, IMHO, ended in 1949) when our "ideas" of comic books were being formed. At that time, coloring WAS an afterthought not even done by the comic book producers but by a group associated with the printers (it's why Charlton, which was essentially a printer, always had such crude coloring - they had to hire their own separation people).

I don't remember the Marie Severin bio page in the ECs, but it could easily have been there. Some artists, like Everett Raymond Kinstler, had to beg the publishers to let them have some control over the colors on the covers. Neal Adams in the 1970s was the same way. As was Jim Steranko. But all three of these guys were dealing with whiter paper than Harold Delay had in his Jack in the Box stories - with Charlton coloring even.

We have our preferences based on our experiences, but we should be cautious about applying them as absolutes.

[OtherEric]

Agreed on not applying preferences as absolutes, Jim.  I'm learning a LOT from this discussion and I'm glad you started it!

I hadn't realized the paper had gotten better even by the 60's and 70's, I thought the basic stock was the same up through the 80's and the change in shade was mostly due to age on the older books.

To go off on a tangent, why do you consider 1949 the end of the Golden Age?  It's not a number I've often heard used, most people seem to pick either 1945 (end of WWII) or 1954 (pre-cca).  For myself, I tend to think of it as around the later date with a couple grace years for publishers and titles that went down quickly after the code started but at least tried.  (EC being the classic example there; other than Mag Magazine EC=GA to me.) 

[OtherEric]

Moving this back since I moved the ages of comics discussion elsewhere.

I hope you were able to detect the notes of bemused admiration in my post, jcolag,
I have achieved complete mastery of the "page down" key (and actually used it once you got into the "Iron Age" parts), so I hope you didn't take any criticism from my comments. I can go as far "off-topic" just as fast as you, but have to restrain myself from taking the time to play. It's far too easy and too much fun, but sanity rears its ugly head and says "go back to work and stop indulging yourself."

I do find this topic (How much cleanup?) to be of considerable interest, though, and "what age started when?" is not something that I have devoted many brain cells to in the last 35 years. As I said, I have a different view of comics "history" than most and I'm willing to accept that I am a minority of one (well, maybe two, when Hames agrees with me). So if you want to discuss comics history, I'll be happy to participate in that thread, when time allows.

And can we use this one to talk about OtherEric's first Target scans?  I liked them, Eric, except where they showed what a piece of junk my copy is. Three important aspect of [Levels][Auto] that you should know:

1. The first is that you can apply it as an "Adjustment Layer" - just click the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of the layers palette and choose [Levels] and then [Auto] as before.

2. The "Adjustment Layer" appears above your Background Layer in the palette AND you can adjust the "Opacity" of the adjustment by changing the opacity of that layer.

3. With an Adjustment Layer, you can go back into the file tomorrow and change the Levels that you set with [Auto] or even remove the adjustment layer completely and start over.

I think I'll copy the above to "OtherEric's Scans", too.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[Aussie500]

I'll post the original scan which had no setting or color corrections changes when I originally scanned it.

Original scan (saved as a jpg and sized down from the original tiff) Please note the "texture" of the paper on the cover on the "white" part if you enlarge it to full size (I've never seen that before on the cover paper, it's looks almost like they didn't color it at all):


I do have to agree that it is washed out on the colors, I didn't want to do a lot of color corrections with it as I'm hoping to pass all the covers I scanned over to Cimm32 to redo them, like he did with Strange Worlds #01 cover, (he's working on another Strange Worlds cover as we speak here). But I do think your cover looks better then the one I did Jim. You can change the cover to the file if you want, I have no problem with that. I'm not a master and will probably never be, but I'm always trying to learn more.

I do like to keep the original light brown (the news-print color) on the inside pages so they look as much as they originally did and not over "white" them, but only brighten the colors some, but that's just me.

Also I do have a disk with Photoshop Elements 4.0 on it, but haven't tried the program yet, it came with the new scanner I bought. I'll have to give it a try now.

Geo

The texture problem is caused by resizing a very high resolution scan where the colouring was textured, without first blurring it a bit. There are some disadvantages to wanting a high resolution scan, detail looks great till you resize it. Some scanners will come with some sort of auto correction for slightly blurring the detail on the image. A lot of Dell comics have those annoying large spots somewhat like newsprint, if you try to change the size on a high resolution sharp image you will end up with a checker board pattern. My new scanner will blur the scans for me, l used to do it myself and when resizing used weighted average resampling rather than the sharper bicubic, then l sharpen the image once l have the final size. If you cannot be bothered rescanning something that has ended up with a strange pattern not present in the original, using an edge preserving noise removal tool will make it slightly better, but its best to blur it before resizing, and simply avoid the problem.



My monitor is unfortunately very dark now, so l cannot edit at the moment, but l prefer a middle of the road approach as well. The comic never looks as yellow when you have it in your hand, but when scanning any imperfections will show, and there is nothing like a nice white background to make even a slight yellowing obvious.

[JVJ]

I don't particularly "recommend" my version, Geo,
as I said earlier, the samples I created were meant to show how far one could go, and this thread was to get people to decide whether or not to make that journey.

Personally, I can't see any "texture" on the white areas of the cover. And, Aussie, there is NO coloring (and, hence, no "textured coloring") on the white areas. Usually, such "texture" is caused by moires - the dot patterns of the color grids interacting with the pixel grid of your display, but, as Aussie says, the patterns of color on some comics don't always downsample cleanly and embed a moire into a color area. It's even worse if you plan on PRINTING the image. If you have some time, browse through some back issues of Alter Ego and check out the various scans of comic pages. If you think a monitor pixel grid can cause a moire, think what a half-tone screen can do to reduced color tint pattern on a comic page. You often see horrible moires in the color areas.

On your scan, Geo, on my monitor, I can see fine moires on the water and the smoke from the airplane. If you compare your scan in those areas to Aussie's you see that she very neatly applied a blur ONLY to the flat color areas - protecting the black lines from the blur. She ends up with ZERO moire, flat and accurate color, and still with crisp, sharp blacks.

If anyone's interested in MY take on this cover, see page 95 of my book, Everett Raymond Kinstler: The Artist's Journey through Popular Culture 1942-1962.

[cimmerian32]

How much clean-up for covers?  This is the Strange Worlds #5 before shot...

and this is the cleaned-up version...

[narfstar]

WOW

[rez]

Great stuff Cimm!
Always love seeing before and after pics like that.

When replacing the missing chips do you view another scan of the issue cover to see what all was in the missing opening? Did you paint in the missing pieces of the Avon icon or use a copy/paste from a different issue?

Questions. Questions. I can be such a pest.

I can only imagine the amount of time and labor a work of that caliber must have taken.

[JVJ]

Nice job, cimmerian,
Again, I'm forced to acknowledge the sad condition of so many of my comics. I'm honored that you'd take the time to bring it back to "life". The only thing I would object to is that the whites of the title don't match the whites of the rest of the cover - and therefore look false to me. The title should be the same tone as the whites of the BEM's eyes and the highlights on the damsel's dress - don't you think? Both are uncolored areas of white cover paper and should be the same "color". IMHO.

[Yoc]

Wow, another wonderful job Cimm, you ARE the Man!

[cimmerian32]

Rez...  I freehended the missing areas of the art, and pasted the Avon stamp from my copy of Phantom Witch Doctor (with a little colour change).

JVJ...  The whites ARE the same shade, it just appears to be whiter in the large blank areas because of the tiny colour lines in the BEM's eyes and on the girl's dress...  I leeched the entire cover with the same selective colour edits.

[JVJ]

I hear what you're saying, Cimmerian, but my eyes (and Photoshop) tell me otherwise.

Here's  the original scan with four 5 pixel-by-5 pixel color samplers:

#1 is on the S in Strange
#2 is on the highlight on the BEM's helmet
#3 and #4 are on different parts of the BEM's eye.

The colors measured are VERY close to being identical, especially #1 and #2.

Here's your adjusted scan with similarly-placed color samplers:

(of course, I didn't manage to get them in the same order..., sorry)

But #1 and #4 here correlate to #1 and #2 above. 255,255,255 is pure white, so #1 (at 253,246,229) is coming VERY close to white, while all of the others show considerably more Yellow and Magenta (the lower the values of Blue and Green, the more Yellow and Magenta) and #2 and #3 show much more Cyan (the color opposite Red on the color wheel). So somehow you managed to adjust the title to a different degree than the other uncolored areas.

I'm not trying to be critical and again want to commend you for your efforts (AND for the results), but the contrast between the white areas DOES exist. I've done too much scanning and color adjusting not to notice what I consider to be a flaw in my several of my own efforts. And I thought you might want to be aware of it. If not, c'est la vie.

(for the record, I got pretty much the same results with a 3 pixel-by-3 pixel set of samplers.)

[cimmerian32]

Well, man, all I can tell ya is that when I took the magenta, cyan and yellow levels down in white, I did it to the entire page.  It is possible that we achieved a different read as I don't have much experience with level adjustments...  I do all of my "squinching" with the tint adjustments in image/adjustments/seperate colors in PS7...  I've experimented with using levels, but never achieved satisfactory results.

As for reading your chart, I understand what you are saying, I'm just not sure why the reads are so different, given the all-inclusive edit done...  Is it possible that when I did the brightness/contrast adjustments, and the red/green/yellow adjustments, that it changed the consistency of the white balances?

[OtherEric]

Wow.  This is getting well beyond my skill levels but I find the discussion fascinating.  Beautiful work on the cover, Cimm.  And thank you for your insights, JVJ.