Album Covers 45 - Discwasher's Revenge!

Our other thread had gotten rather large so it seemed a new one was in order. Anyway...

Newly added:

David Foster - The Best of Me (front, back, MFSL stuff, labels)

http://vinylalbumcovers.com/david-foster-the-best-of-me-mfsl/

Ed

 

I suppose I should probably add that there are so many albums currently on the site, I had to buy more disc space to continue the project. We'd used very nearly 10 gigs. I bumped us up to 50 gigs so look for more stuff coming soon!

Ed

 

Newly added:

Steely Dan - "Everything Must Go" (front, lyric sheet, back, labels)

http://vinylalbumcovers.com/steely-dan-everything-must-go-german-press/

There should be no moire here at all, @Electric Warrior. I descreened at the scan stage and resized bicubically. I see nothing. Hope you don't either...LOL!

Ed

 

Yeah, it's much smoother. Have you tried if you can get away with not descreening at the scan stage and just shrinking bicubically? It usually works for me, but my scanner's output is a little different from yours.

Those dark covers are a nightmare to touch up, aren't they? Every bit of wear shows and it's often hard to tell what is wear and what is part of the image. I recently needed a lot of patience for this one:

 

Anybody know of a nice way to frame your picture sleeves?

You can find LP wall frames anywhere... but 45s? Hard to find for me! Ideally, it would be a 3-set up deal (3 45s in a row)...

Something like this, but 45s only... I only see them with record half-out, or something. Isn't there at least one company making frames for pics sleeves? Thanks!



Jeff

 

I love this! It's like you had access to the graphic itself! Nice work! The "Stereo" line is nice and clear without looking sharpened.

The descreen is precisely what solved my problem. Thanks for suggesting it. That setting at the scan stage is hard to find but once I did, the results were pretty incredible. "Everything Must Go" is my best work. I'm just getting started...

Ed

 

Did you try bagsunlimited.com? They might have what you need.

Ed

 

Thank you! I sure like my covers clean!
I was experimental with this one and used the scanner's descreen setting and resized it with "bicubic sharper". While it worked well, I skip the descreening step now, to preserve more detail. In case of moire patterns (which I have yet to encounter) I can add a little blur myself (the same technique the scan software uses). Or I could also descreen it properly using a FFT plugin, which can give far better results.

 

@Captain Groovy

For some reason, that URL didn't work. Try this one:

45rpm Picture Sleeve Frames

Ed

 

Thanks so much - any idea how these adhere to the matte? Or frame? I'm preserving these in addition to displaying (nice they use 98& UV protection - so important).

https://www.bagsunlimited.com/p-2563-45-rpm-record-frame-kit.aspx

Anybody have experience with this kind of home-framing?

Thanks!

Jeff

 

I got lucky a few years ago at The Dollar Tree, they had black wood frames with rounded edges
that were the perfect size for 45 rpm pic sleeves. I bought 16 at a dollar each, and never saw them in the store again.

 

Newly added (by request of @Grant)

Deniece Williams - My Melody (front, back, sleeves, labels)

http://vinylalbumcovers.com/deniece-williams-my-melody/

I gave @Grant the pieces of this one to work on as he requested some time ago. I didn't realize how messy this would be. I decided to go ahead and do it on my own because of what a difficult "fix" job this turned into. The gory details are at the link...LOL!

Ed

 

Thanks! Fantastic job, bro!

I really couldn't do any kind of decent job on the cover. My effort was downright shameful. What tripped me up was trying to clone the bad spots on her hair. Truth is, I just gave up!

This is somewhat typical of what I find with R&B albums. It is also what I mean when I say that most R&B music lovers aren't audiophiles, and don't care about sound. It's also why I have been so frustrated with the industry's overall lack of concern with R&B music. Even though you can fins a lot of things as imports, the Japanese product is expensive and scarce, and the U.K. product suffers from horrible mastering!

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Per your IM to me, I'll fix the saturation if that's all that's wrong. As I said there, my copy looks like as the finished product does. I'll go look at some others and see what they look like. This is is the "Raydio" thing all over again. LOL!

One word: Sequel Records. LOL!! I grabbed a "Lakeside Greatest Hits" from them and the mastering is...um...interesting. Subsequently, the two Atlantic albums on a Cherry Red subsidiary sound fantastic. It's seems to be a crapshoot. Also, my James Mason CD as done by Soul Brother sounds really good too. Amen on the Japanese stuff.

Ed

 

When I put your raw scan next to your finished product in photoshop, your finished version was different in color.

Here is my correction:

 

This is really nice! I can see the cloning corrections in the hair, for sure, but there's really no way to hide them. LOL! The hair is just so trashed that there's no avoiding it. In truth, my scan to you isn't true to my cover. The scanning software changed the tone of my cover so I changed it's settings on mine to be truer to the cover I put on the site. My cover looks like my finished scan. Usually, as covers are mistreated, the coloring should have washed away, not intensified. Strange... She absolutely looks more natural here. I was just trying to match my cover.

I just looked around on the net to see others and they're all way off. Nothing looks good. The only difference between yours and mine is that mine is a little redder than yours. The nails on my actual cover are really red. My cover echoes that. The nails on yours are less vivid. Not sure which one I like better, actually.

Your cover is great! The text is very clean and so are the hands! The skin tones you got look more natural for sure. So much for giving up. If this is you throwing the towel, I'd love to see what happens when you're totally satisfied...LOL!

Ed

 

I dunno what happened, because i've never seen a cover of that album as red as yours. Same thing with that Wild Cherry cover. Hmmmm...what's strange is that, for example, your Chuck Mangione covers look very, very accurate, if not, a tad less vibrant! Has there been some changes in your gear or workflow since you did those?

BTW, i'll bet Denise Williams would be flattered that she is getting some name dropping these days.

 

But she might be less than pleased you spelled her name "Denise"

 

Didn't know about the Wild Cherry cover. The color there, too, matches the one I have. Based on @Electric Warrior's suggestion, I have begun to descreen and use bicubic resampling when I resize my images. All those two things did was get rid of the moire effect some images suffered from. There are likely to be variances in pressings from album to album. I'm sure that's all it is. I always check my work against the actual jacket. I've also started using other images on the net to make sure I'm closer to the original intent. That practice began with the Raydio debacle.

Ed

 

The Raydio cover was beautiful! I did my CD cover, but your LP version was so good that I deleted mine. Yours matched my LP cover.

Gotta be careful of things online. Some of them are terrible. I'm sure people think we're weird for caring about the covers.

 

Thanks, man! No, I meant the first one. Remember the one I did that was based on a sun-destroyed copy I had. The first I had was practically brown. I had to scrap it, find another copy (which took no time), and redo the whole thing.

Oh, but we are. Totally weird...and I love it. LOL!

Ed

 

Newly added:

Manhattan Transfer - "Extensions" [MFSL] (front, back, sleeves, MFSL stuff, labels)

http://vinylalbumcovers.com/manhattan-transfer-extensions-mfsl/

Ed

P.S.: This LP sounds just incredible. One of the absolute best I own. If you're into the Transfer at all, you need this pressing. eBay has a few right now and it's worth whatever you pay for it. "Foreign Affair" on this pressing is so good, there are no words.

 

Great job. I have a lot of her 45 picture sleeves I need to scan one day soon.

Pat

 

Newly added:

Diana Ross and The Supremes with The Temptations - "The Original Sound Track from TCB" (front, gatefold, back, sleeves, labels)

http://vinylalbumcovers.com/diana-r...emptations-the-original-sound-track-from-tcb/

Ed