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Karen's Post got me thinking about books so I decides to post some of my more prized sign making books. I would like to see what others have and possibly do some scanning to pdf formats on some of the rarer versions. "Without copyright violations"
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Bill, It would seem that between you, myself and the Peaches, we have most of what has been printed. (a possible exageration?) I have about ten that are not in your collection as shown. I am sure the Peaches have many more. Irish
-------------------- William "Irish" Holohan Resting...Read "Between Jobs." Marlboro, MA 01752 email: firemap1@aol.com Posts: 1110 | From: Marlboro, MA | Registered: Dec 2001
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My opinion is, if the authors are long dead and the books are long out of print, if there is a technical violation of copyright, it's better to distribute the information than to have it fade into obscurity, helping nobody.
My mind wanders. And that's not a good thing, 'cause it's too small to be out there alone. Posts: 3129 | From: Tooele, UT | Registered: Mar 2005
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I might be out of line here..but..I have all the time I need to do vectorization of classic sign work.
I LOVE much of the "funky" styles that were used (even though "funky" wasn't a term then)
I do it because I can, and I enjoy the challenge of trying to recreate the older images in a modern format.
If any of you have a vintage "sign" that you could send me, I'd be happy to give it a try.
No compensation involved and if you would care to check out what I am interested in doing, just send me an e-mail and I can send you a sample or two.
I am just enjoying retirement and love what I like doing. No monetary gain involved.
-------------------- Dave Grundy retired in Chelem,Yucatan,Mexico/Hensall,Ontario,Canada 1-519-262-3651 Canada 011-52-1-999-102-2923 Mexico cell 1-226-785-8957 Canada/Mexico home
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Bill, I've got a 1917 version of the Strong book. Don't know if it's any different than yours. The color plates are in good shape. I love the old speedballl books. I had a 1928 version but it got ruined in a flood.
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No Dave your Not out of line at all. That's one reason I am picking up all these books.. First to help preserve them for the future and to be able to share them with others.
"Knowledge not shared is Knowledge wasted"
I also want to digitize a lot of the old funky stuff.. Many of Mike Jackson's vectors on CD's are based out of Strong and Atkinson.
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For those who may have an interest...There is one piece of hardware and two pieces of software that will make scanning and cleaning up copied books fairly straight forward and won't break the bank. First is, of course Photoshop. 6 or 7. I am makin the assumtion that most have Photoshop. Second is a scanning "add on" piece of software called View Scan which multiplies your control of the scan by at least ten fold. A super, up front time saver. Third is an old scanner, still available on eBay and Craigslist. It is an 8 1/2" aby 14" scanner It is the HP ScanJet IICX. Original cost of this tank of a scanner was around $1,400 US. Ideal for scan and stitch of large pages. 300 - dpi is fine for almost anything you will do. A very large hard drive is essential as the files are large. They have to be to get printed output that matches the original I have scanned and cleaned up approximately 30 antique sign/lettering related books to date. Should get off my lazy butt and put them into PDF format. For the faint of heart, this is extremely tedious and time consuming, but super rewarding. There may be some of you with large flatbed scanners already. They should work fine.
-------------------- William "Irish" Holohan Resting...Read "Between Jobs." Marlboro, MA 01752 email: firemap1@aol.com Posts: 1110 | From: Marlboro, MA | Registered: Dec 2001
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Odd that this came up. Just today I was going through my old "Broadside" newsletters. For several years I subscribed to this . These were published (on a copy machine, 11 x 17 both sides) about every month by Mac McQuarrie, a seasoned lettering pro who had a habit, or should I say foresight, to scrounge garage sales and the like for old magazines and all manner of advertising materials.
He would page through this old stuff and clip out the best examples of hand lettering. He also included a page of calligraphy examples, as well as a good amount of layout and hand lettering wit and wisdom.
I don't know if he is still doing this or not but it was sure a joy to get his envelope in the mailbox. On each issue, the masthead would be a different style and hand done. His Christmas cards were great.
-------------------- Curt Stenz Graphics 700 Squirrel Lane Marathon, WI 54448 Posts: 590 | From: Marathon, WI 54448 | Registered: Dec 1998
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William...When you say you've "cleaned up" the pictures do you mean that you've enhanced the bitmap images and retained them in that format?
Or that you have digitised them into vector format?
Both processes are time consuming and both can produce great results, although in different ways.
I know absolutely nothing about PhotoShop and only slightly more about Corel PhotoPaint. My "thing" is using CorelDraw to digitise or vectorise.
So far I have finished 40+ images over a period of about 18 months. I just work away at it when the mood strikes.
Please e-mail me a couple of samples if you don't mind and I'll send you a couple.
-------------------- Dave Grundy retired in Chelem,Yucatan,Mexico/Hensall,Ontario,Canada 1-519-262-3651 Canada 011-52-1-999-102-2923 Mexico cell 1-226-785-8957 Canada/Mexico home
I remember a few very good articles, by Mac McQuarrie, in Signcraft from years ago!!! They WERE informative AND witty.
-------------------- Dave Grundy retired in Chelem,Yucatan,Mexico/Hensall,Ontario,Canada 1-519-262-3651 Canada 011-52-1-999-102-2923 Mexico cell 1-226-785-8957 Canada/Mexico home
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Acrobat is a good for compiling multiple scans into a single PDF. It's expensive by itself, but some of us have it as part of an adobe suite.
high resolution black and white images can be saved at very small file sizes if they are converted from grayscale to bitmap (black or white pixels only - no grays) and then saved as .tif images with LZW compression. When making the conversion, make sure to choose "50% threshold" as the method. Never choose dither. It's amazing how small a 600dpi or 1200dpi image will save in this format.
My mind wanders. And that's not a good thing, 'cause it's too small to be out there alone. Posts: 3129 | From: Tooele, UT | Registered: Mar 2005
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I scanned in 3 books tonight and will upload them to my site tonight.. Internet is super slow tonight for some reason. The books I scanned are.. Ames Alphabets 1884 "Art of Ticket Writing" 1887 1927 Speedball phamplet.
All scanned High rez color and made into .pdf (including my grubby hand in a few.) I will post links in a new thread.
I am lucky as I have a Konica Document center so it makes short work of scanning in books. I would be happy to scan in anyone else books granted they will trust me with their book for a few days.
Dave I meant I have over 5000 different labels and the such I have been collecting and putting on Cd's or that I have bought on CD. I have started Vectorizing a few. There is so many I want to do but never enough time and many I want to turn in to glass or dimensional pieces. (kinda like your cigar one.. That will surly become a glass or Dimensional
(Oppps wrong Bill)
[ June 16, 2009, 12:04 AM: Message edited by: William DeBekker ]
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Dave, I Scan the original book pages, at 200% of original size at 300 dpi. tif format for clean up. They can be easily reduced to original size after clean up. Then import into Photoshop... I have basically an exact "as is" replica of the page. My usual steps are to then "auto contrast" then manually adjust "contrast"/"brightness". I then begin to clean up using the "Airbrush tool" and the "clone stamp" tool. My object is to get a crisp, clean page/drawing/or whatever., that when printed out looks "like new". I have vectorized a few things, but that is not my main objective. I wish to get an end result that will look like the original when it was originally printed. Being a retired old geezer with absolutely too much time on his hands, the literally hundreds of hours spent doing this over the last few years has not effected my sex life drastically. In fact, I have no sex life. If i get around to putting the books into pdf format, getting them re-printed would be no problem...costly, but no problem. Especially those that are full of color illustrations. The Atkinson book (1915 printing)was 250 plus pages + covers. This on paper that had gone yellow. A long, tedious, but utterly satisfying project.
-------------------- William "Irish" Holohan Resting...Read "Between Jobs." Marlboro, MA 01752 email: firemap1@aol.com Posts: 1110 | From: Marlboro, MA | Registered: Dec 2001
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Bill.. If you go into Photoshop and Click File/Automate/Pdf Prensentation this will allow you to recompile all the photos you want into a PDF book. If you don't have a full version of Acrobat.
Also Bill. If you wanted to send a copy on CD. I do have Binding Equipment that I could make some into Hard Copies.. Spiral bound and/or Hot Glue bound up to 400 or so pages. Left over from the Kinkos fiasco.
Smaller Books 30 pages so we can just do a Direct to Printer, center Folds with a staple bind.
[ June 16, 2009, 12:23 AM: Message edited by: William DeBekker ]
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Hey guys, thought you might find this interesting: I contacted a buddy of mine who owns a book publishing company, and apparently anything published in the United States prior to 1923 is in the Public Domain. I know some of you were worried about copyright issues. I don't know how the newer stuff would be affected, but it looks like anything prior to 1923 is free to redistribute for the most part without any worries. Here is a link with some more detailed info from Cornell University: http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/
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