A Step by Step demo on Scan manipulation - Stage 1

[Red Hook]

Hi All,

 

After Hamster's refusal to produce an actual-size hi-rez scan of his beloved, but totally bogus AF15 over on the CPG boards, I decided, with a scan donated by StrongGuy, to do a demo of how relatively easy it is to completey alter a scan of a book, and eliminate many of it's defects. In this case, SG stated that this book was originally pressed between two heavy books, for like 1,000 years, and the color pulled off when it was removed from between the books. The damage was not the result of water, SG sez.

 

Instead of doing a simple before and after shot, I thought it would be more instructional to post the scan at different points as I worked on it and talk about my approach. My goal is to convince anyone who is putting down big money for a raw book on Ebay, to insist on the seller providing them with really large scans. If the seller can't or won't (ie Hamster) then I wouldn't hesitate to pass on the auction.

 

So here is SGs original scan, on the left and the result of my work on it for about 20 minutes. I'll explain my approach below the images.....

 

 

First of all, this is a REALLY BAD book! So it was a perfect example to work on. My aim here is to not produce a pristine scan of a 9.4....that would be ridiculous (although I might push it a little at the end of this demo). My goal is to take this POS and produce a scan that might pass for a 4.0 or a 5.0 instead of the 1.0 or .5 that it is right now. If you push it too far, you end up with an artificially perfect image, and that's what Hamster's scans all look like. I am going to leave enough imperfections in the scan to make it convincing.

 

That's were he makes his big mistake. The edges of his books are too perfect. They would turn your head if they were on a modern book, let alone a book 40 years old. Sure, you might find one in a blue moon, but considering Hamster's track record and his admitted restoration of the actual books he auctions (ie. all the refunds from a self-proclaimed restoration expert), and the endless stream of wetdream books he auctions, it's easy to see, he's operating from deep inside the Twilight Zone.

 

There is tons of color loss on this cover. To simply go in and paint over the damaged areas with a flat color would look awful, so with the aid of Photoshop's rubber stamp (aka clone tool0, I moved around the image and started to copy areas of actual color on the cover, and then lay those pixels back down on the damaged areas. The idea is to use undamaged neighboring pixels to patch up the damaged areas. This way you can even replicate the dot patterns in the colored areas. Painting flat color would be a dead giveaway.

 

Another approach would be to find a scan or copy of the book that had a similar coloring (ie the cream colored white of the cover) and simply clone portions of that one onto the damaged one. But I decided that for this particular demo I would just stick with the original image.

 

In this first stage I concentrated on the big X, and started work on Marvel Girl. I also removed the biggest crease in the book, about halfway up the right side. Right now, the red of the big x looks way too perfect, so I will be going in and roughing it up a bit later.

 

I'lll post the next stage a little later today.

 

Redhook

 

PS Hope you're looking on Hamster. This is the way to do it!

[NewtSamson]

I look forward to reading the rest of your posts. BRAVO!!!!

[kryptonitecomics]

Fantastic idea and very educational for those of us that do not have the same skill sets in photoshop.

 

Since I obviously buy a lot of raw books on Ebay, I am certainly in a positions to get scammed more often that most (see my thread in the grading section about being done with buying raw books on Ebay) .

 

I also look forward to seeing this books progression form a certified POS (no offense to the owner) to a certified work of art

[OldGuy]

Ok, you have my attention.

[burntboy]

nice start to the process - looking forward to more.............

[Red Hook]

Okay, subtle changes developing. Marvel girl almost done. Magento area behind iceman almost done. Legs and feet of beast almost done. Logo had to start over because I accidentally saved over the old file. Brightened up the image so you could see detail better

 

 

 

[Red Hook]

Here's some detail around Marvel Girl. About 30 minutes of work additional this stage.

 

[Red Hook]

I'm basically wandering around the image.......keeping the whole thing going at once. I may have to go back in and rough up the right edge.

 

I am also not using a better copy for visual reference, so ultimately if you sit and compare, you might find subtle differences. That's cause I don't want to spend too much time on this. Imagine if the original problems were a bumped corner or a color fleck? Piece o' cake.

 

The average bidder would never have a chance of detecting this.

[valiantman]

Here's some detail around Marvel Girl. About 30 minutes of work additional this stage.

Very nice wrinkle removal... it still hints that there are "waves" there...

so the hypothetical seller can point out that the wrinkles ARE visible in the (doctored) scan.

[Mr. Zipper]

Very nice wrinkle removal... it still hints that there are "waves" there...

so the hypothetical seller can point out that the wrinkles ARE visible in the (doctored) scan.

 

The wrinkles may actually help flag a doctored scan.... when one portion of the book is wrinkled, but the wrinkling suddenly stops where there is a color change...

[Red Hook]

Great observation. You don't want the book surface to look dead-flat in this case. Remember, I just want to bump up the grade a 3 or 4 points. This ain't "The Swan".

 

It has to look somewhat natural.

 

Another thing I want to point out.....the magenta area behind iceman. This is a trouble area for a retoucher, because it's a big wide area of one color. Just like the brown areas on the AF15. If you go over and over this with the clone tool, to fill in the colors, you HAVE to deal with the dot pattern. You can easily end up with a bit of a "mottled" look, because you are cloning already-cloned areas. Think of it as digital inbreeding. The magenta here is a bit mottled looking as a result, because I had only small areas of undamaged color to clone from. In the case of Hammers AF15, the brown area has an unnatural mottled look because, I believe, either pixel pushing in that area or plain old color retouching. You end up with the Silver Age equivalent of Michael Jackson's nose......or lack of nose.

 

Check out the images below. The top is from Hammer's current auction. I lightened the image and sharpened it a bit.....it's STILL a bit fuzzy. You can see the mottled areas, which if not done digitally are definitely color touch. Compare this to the red background color. It's perfectly flat. The mottling is not the result of the scanning process itself.

 

 

 

The lower image is a 9.0 CGC Curator copy sold on Heritage. Although a MUCH sharper image, the brown area is MUCH more uniform. And the greyish bubble shape in the Curator shows SOME normal imperfections. The grey bubble area in Hammers looks like a piece of industrial carpet. If he ever released a high rez image, the manipulations, both physical and digital would be very evident!!

 

I mean, we are talking about a CURATOR copy. Even that has some specks, etc.

Hammer's is a dream scan.

[Aces]

Since he's so good with colors...

Why doesn't Keys just get a job as a painter or something!?

[Red Hook]

Who said he's good with colors? I think he is slightly above average at best.

 

[Illiterati-migration]

Who said he's good with colors?

 

I did! Who wants a piece of me?!?!

 

[samurai007]

 

 

Why are the words "Introducing: Spider-Man!" brown on 1 comic and grey on the other?

[Aces]

They actually look kinda blueish grey on comic one (keys handywork) to me.

 

Might be computer screen differences though...

[samurai007]

They actually look kinda blueish grey on comic one (keys handywork) to me.

 

Might be computer screen differences though...

Yes, the top one is bluish grey, but look at the same words on the bottom one... they are very clearly the same brown as the upper background area. Since the background brown is similar in color between the 2 scans, we know it wasn't an overall thing (ie: if all the background brown were looking a bluish grey, it may be a scanner problem, but it isn't... only that part is a different color)

[AlexH]

Very informative Hook. Keep up the good work.

[Red Hook]

Thanks Alex.

 

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the actual color differences.........there are enough variations in the color balances and quality of the original scans to make it look like there were variants.

 

Don't get distracted by that. I could have fooled around and brought them into line more, but that wasn't the gist of my exposition.

[samurai007]

I don't know... I did a websearch and picture after picture showed that the writing is a different color than the brown background... it's a bluish grey. Here is a sample from around the web:

 

 

 

 

I couldn't find a single copy in which the Spider-Man blurb was brown. If it was just a matter of shade (lt brown vs dark brown, or bluish grey vs steel grey), I wouldn't think much of it, but that's clearly a whole different color.

 

IMHO, either it's a true varient, or else its a restoration or photoshop job on the Heritage brown-label version...