Question for people who own the 1984 VHS releases — Page 2

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-DVD-Covers/post/431932/#TopicPost431932

These covers have images on them that should be sufficient resolution. They are better than my scans would be, as these ones have no halftone ink artifacts and are nicely color corrected to how they look like on the box.

penguinofgreatness said:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-DVD-Covers/post/431932/#TopicPost431932

These covers have images on them that should be sufficient resolution. They are better than my scans would be, as these ones have no halftone ink artifacts and are nicely color corrected to how they look like on the box.

I came across those earlier actually, but the AT-AT Walker photo on the TESB box is not the same shot that's on the VHS box (on the VHS box the Walkers are firing), and the Luke Skywalker photo is framed differently from the VHS box (his entire light saber and most of his right foot are visible in the frame on the VHS box rather than being partially cropped off).

Are these just screenshots from the movies? I looked for the TESB Luke Skywalker image in the movie, but I couldn't find that exact shot, only a similar shot (but more cropped just like on the DVD covers you linked to). I wonder where the photos came from in the first place? If they're not directly from the movie, I don't think a source better than scanning the VHS box is possible.

I think there are various things that potentially can be done about the halftone dots from scanning the box, or they might not be a problem at all when printed. They are small pictures, and the halftone dots aren't noticeable on the original box with the naked eye. The reason they are so noticeable when scanned in at a high DPI and viewed on a monitor is because a monitor displays everything at ~72 DPI regardless of the file's actual DPI; so when something that is e.g. 300 DPI is viewed, the monitor acts as a giant magnifying glass, making it appear huge / closeup on your screen. If scanned in at screen resolution, it would appear small on your screen the same as it does on the box and the halftone dots wouldn't be noticeable, but it also wouldn't be suitable for printing.

Unfortunately, inkjet printers also use halftone, so you'd get halftone on top of halftone (not sure if it would be noticeable on the actual print though). One thing that can be done is to scan it in at a much higher DPI than needed (like 1200) and then I could resample it down to 300 DPI (among other things possibly). For example, I just did a test with my old crappy scanner (it maxes out at 600 DPI) and one of the few VHS boxes I have here:

I scanned the top image in at 300 DPI and left it as-is. I scanned the bottom image in at 600 DPI and then resampled it to 300 DPI in Photoshop. As you can see, the halftone patterns mostly disappear. I suspect that the results would be even better with a 1200 DPI scan resampled to 300 DPI.

Edit: So this is where I'm at with the TESB sleeve:

It was more work than I expected. For one thing, the font for the "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" text on the spine looked like ordinary Helvetica (bold, condensed, oblique). Well Helvetica only lined up for some of the letters, but the R and the S and a few others were off significantly. I even ran the image through WhatTheFont.com's automated font identification software, and it thought it was Helvetica too. In any event, I had to do a lot of modifications to Helvetica to make it match.

Then I thought the 20th Century Fox logo on the lower right hand corner of the front of the box would be easy, because I'd seen one on SeekLogo.com earlier while searching (in vain) for a CBS/FOX logo. So I downloaded the one from SeekLogo.com, and it turned out to be different (though it looks about the same at a glance). With some research I found out that the logo I needed was the style used from the mid 1960s to the early 1990s, and I couldn't find a vector version of that. So I had to make that myself.

The vector TESB logo on the front that I got from SeekLogo.com didn't quite match but it only needed minor modifications to line up (a little shearing and tweaking of a few anchor points). Whoever vectorized that logo did a nice job. 

The scan: http://i.imgur.com/Zzzoi.jpg

It does not look great, but should hopefully look better when printed. The Yoda image from the dvd cover (the on I linked to) is close enough to this scan. (His walking stick and expression are slightly different) I think you should use that version, as my yoda looks very speckled and faded.

The images on the Return of The Jedi dvd cover are very similar to the vhs ones, so instead of a scan, I think you should just crop them to how they are on the vhs.

@ penguinofgreatness: Thanks yet again.

doubleofive said:

Just saw the Empire one. That's the cover I grew up with, so its really sentimental for me. I can't wait until its done. If I could find the GOUT, That's what I would put it in.

Yeah, same here. I never owned the VHS tapes, but I rented them many times at "See Zee Video" when I was a kid in the '80s, and that's the type of boxes they were in. I had the GOUT in mind for these sleeves as well.

TESB is done for the time being (I updated the picture I posted) and I'm working on ROTJ. I'm having trouble finding suitable cover art though. I found a good scan of the ROTJ poster, 300 DPI with a good level of fine detail, but it's been cropped on the bottom (to remove the text from the poster). All others I've found have been sorely lacking in fine detail and/or too low resolution and/or the wrong version (e.g. a green lightsaber instead of a blue one).

This thread (I think there is a good one somewhere in there) or this site might have what you need. If not, you could pm msycamore. I think he mentioned that he had a bunch of high quality scans he was going to post.

Edit: These seem alright.

penguinofgreatness said:

This thread (I think there is a good one somewhere in there) or this site might have what you need. If not, you could pm msycamore. I think he mentioned that he had a bunch of high quality scans he was going to post.

Edit: These seem alright.

Yeah, I've been to all of those links already, not much luck. The relevant picture in that last link isn't bad, but it is irritating knowing that there is at least one higher quality scan out there that I can't use because someone cropped the bottom off it. I'll show you what I mean:

The top image is a section from the one I found that has been cropped on the bottom (it doesn't go any lower than what you see there). The bottom picture is a section from the scan in your last link. The top scan is higher quality; more fine detail; while the bottom scan almost looks like it has been posterized. I'd like to find an uncropped version of that top scan, or one just as good.

Cobra Kai said:

Maxim, i think the ones from that last link would look perfectly fine.  Also with a little photoshop work you could blend the two together in order to extend the cropped image.   

I'll end up using it if I can't find something better. I doubt it will make much (if any) of a noticeable difference when printed, but just knowing there's a better quality scan out there that I can't use, irritates me.

I actually did line the two scans up in Photoshop this morning to see if they could be blended, but I didn't see any satisfactory way of doing it. There is her entire stomach, her forearms, and her bikini bottom. I think clone stamping would just make a mess for example. The texture is totally different in the two scans, which is the problem. I'm sure there are people who could do it, but as for me, I have far more experience on the vector side of things than the raster.

Have you checked with msycamore? He said he had some good scans in this post. Hopefully he posts them all at some point. He posted a sample of Star Wars and it looked very good. These covers are looking great!

Msycamore, that's interesting. I hadn't noticed it before, but you're right: they increased Lando's size relative to the rest of the painting, and it looks like they added a couple of control levers or microphones or something. It would certainly be nice to have a scan of the correct version, but something like that isn't a make or break it kind of thing to me.

Another irritating thing I've discovered about the ROTJ artwork is the framing. It appears that they used most of the available artwork on the VHS box, as opposed to the ANH and TESB boxes where they only used a small section of the available artwork. This allowed me to frame those so that all of the art that was visible on the original VHS boxes was also visible on my DVD sleeves, plus the original artwork extended enough on both sides to fill in the wider aspect ratio DVD cover.

With ROTJ this doesn't seem to be the case (unless there exists a much wider version of the ROTJ artwork that I'm unaware of). So if I included the full length of the artwork as seen on the VHS cover, I'd come up short on the sides (and I don't want to resort to pillar boxing it). So this is what happens:

As you can see, to get the DVD width, the bottom needs to be cropped significantly shorter than on the VHS, which moves the ROTJ text/logo up onto Leia's stomach.

Here is the VHS cover for comparison:

The ROTJ text/logo is down below her waist. There is no good solution to this problem (unless, as I said before, there exists a much wider version of the ROTJ artwork that I'm unaware of) so I'll probably just have to live with it. It doesn't look bad ... the posters actually put the text up on Leia's stomach too, but they also used white text (instead of gray) and a hard-edged drop shadow behind it as well.

msycamore said:

Ok, the good news is that I actually had quite a few Jedi style B scans, and that the Australian and German versions display a lot more of the artwork compared to the US version. The bad news is that all of them have the "larger Lando artwork", now when I think about it, I'm pretty sure I have seen a third variation of this artwork. Anyway, the Jedi logo cover parts of Leia's body in every version except the US half sheet, but that one is unfortunately not in that good quality.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1lkhsa

They're all in bmp-format and need some color correction, the Australian posters have fold marks but is otherwise pretty nice looking. Hope these help.

 Those are great, thanks. It is too bad that half-sheet wasn't scanned in at a higher quality because it is the perfect format, i.e., no text/logos and no creases. Unfortunately, the artwork area of it is only 114 mm wide @ 300 DPI, and it needs to be at least 129.5 mm wide. Setting it to 129.5 mm wide brings the DPI down to 265, which isn't terrible, but it is also lacking the fine detail that the other scans in your folder have. I think I'll see what I can do with the one labeled "Style B". That one is beautiful; the best I've seen so far. 

doubleofive said:

HA, tiny Lando! I'm torn, as I love the accuracy of the others, but I'm also OK with how Jedi looks with the actual poster art. Maxim, you admit to not being good at rasterized images, maybe someone can take a crack at shrinking Lando and faking more to the side?

 Yeah, if anyone wants to take a shot at that (as well as removing the text/logos if they are feeling up to it), they can download msycamore's file and use "Style B.bmp" (that's by far the nicest scan of the lot, and the best ROTJ scan I've seen, period). Just be sure to not introduce any lossy compression to it while working on it or saving the final file (use e.g. TIF [with LZW compression] or PNG).

I might see what I can do with it as well; this type of manipulation is more in line with the kind of raster experience I have (i.e., manipulating existing elements rather than trying to seamlessly match elements from various sources), though I'm far from a Photoshop guru.

doubleofive said:

I'm playing with them as well. There is slightly more to the sides of the other posters, we should be able to add extra there to give a bit more to work with.

I took a close look at the Lando thing. Simply shrinking Lando would be easy if you weren't trying to recreate something specific (i.e., if you could fudge the blank background that is left behind when you shrink him). However, redrawing or otherwise recreating the missing background after you shrink him, in a way that matches the VHS art (for which I don't even have a particularly high resolution scan) is beyond me. Maybe you or someone else can do it, but I believe you'll need a nice high resolution scan of the VHS box art for reference first.   

doubleofive said:

Honestly, if we had a nice high resolution of the VHS box, we could just try putting Tiny Lando in there and calling it a day. If the colors and blending are done well enough, no one would notice.

Of course, no one will notice that its not Tiny Lando either...

 Yeah, I doubt I ever would have noticed the difference in the size of Lando if it hadn't been pointed out.

I tried to merge some of the scans. It is a little rough, but I think it looks alright.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1164042/Full.png

Edit: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1164042/2nd_Attempt.png (better then the first)