I have gotten ideas from this forum on how to add vinyl 45s to the database. Hopefully I’ve been doing it correctly - as a Single using “Title A / Title B” as the release title.
All of the 45s I have are from the years 1954 - 1979 or there about. Most came in a paper sleeve with no other cover. Most from the 70’s were originally purchased by me or my (now) wife. The older ones are from her childhood.
I’ve not seen anything in the forums on artwork for 45s so I’ve adopted a standard that I hope is correct or at least acceptable for the Front and Back art (it’s useful to have Front for when Picard matches the release). If the 45 came in a sleeve, I used a photograph of the 45 in the sleeve as the Front art. If the back of the sleeve is different than the front or otherwise unique, I’ve included that as Back art, otherwise having no Back. And the 45 itself is included as Media. In some cases where I don’t have a sleeve at all, I’ll likely just mark the A side as Front & Media.
I agree re. vinyl in sleeve as ‘front’, otherwise vinyl as front + medium.
My only nitpicky input is:
It would be great if yoiu could take photos on a white background - and ideally use a scanner. Just because you’re already putting all this time and work in, you may as well get a nice picture that wont be replaced.
For the media pics I wouldn’t have the vinyl on top of the sleeve, just on it’s own on white.
If you’re taking a picture of the vinyl in the sleeve for the front, I would always take and upload one of the back, even if it’s not special. Confirmation that the back isn’t special is also useful identifying information
Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Very much appreciated.
On the scanner, I assume I should trim to the edges of the sleeve and squared around the vinyl versus leaving the entire white background of the flatbed?
I can only second aerozol’s praise. As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, 45s are not that well represented on MB so it’s great to have someone taking an interest in them.
As for titles, I think your approach is good. Some singles in MB are titled only by their A-side, which is arguably better when there are multiple releases with different B-sides. (Some promo singles had the same song on both A and B sides; also, singles were sometimes released with different B-sides in different countries. Those all belong in the same RG in my opinion.)
The Bruce Springsteen catalog is one of the most extensive singles-wise of any I’ve come across in MB, and you can see some of these variants represented there.
Ha! I’ve got some covers that are way, way worse. Tatters. But I’ll flatten them out as best I can and scan them in. I think it’s still useful for the historical record.
Most 45 covers don’t scan that well on cheaper scanners. Even very light kinks and wrinkles will always show. Some of the better scanners use a non directional light source which evens things out.
Thank you again for your comments. I’ve replace a few of photos of the the older, picture-type sleeves and media with scanned images as you suggested. They do look a lot more clear. And once I got my workflow down, it was actually easier than photographing.
Off-topic, have you thoughts on larger media - 10" and 17"? They don’t fit on the scanner bed (all-in-one printer/scanner) so I can’t scan them. I’ve mostly completed my collection but still have maybe 30-50 more and I’d like to put my best effort into them.
Thank you for the thoughts and link to the tutorial. Most of my 45 library have simple paper sleeves but perhaps 15 or so have more elaborate picture-type sleeves. And most of those are very old and could probably benefit from your technique. While I still had the media in my hands, I’ve scanned each side in both directions as you suggest and I’ll have a go at the technique to see if I can improve the image. If nothing else, I’d hope to learn how to use the image editing software (Gimp) better.
I’ve had some success using Hugin to stitch together partial scans into a single image. There is a step-by-step tuitorial covering this application of the software.
Another alternative is to take a digital photo of the cover and then crop and edit it as required.
I’m sure that others have additional (better) suggestions.
Thank you; I’ll take a look at Hugin. This (digital photo) is what I’m doing now using the Google Photoscan app. Can’t do much with focus but does let me crop as necessary.
I had a go at the technique you provided the link to and it is noticeably improved. But at least in this instance, there is so much damage to the sleeve that it overwhelms the improvements I’ve managed. I used GIMP and I find no auto-align on the layers so I’ve had to make do with my crude attempt.
Sorry, I just had a closer look at that and I don’t think it will be of any help. There was a plugin that looks like it would do the same thing, but I can’t seem to find out where it went when the site was reorganized.
I’ve added cover art for a handful of LPs (too big for my scanner). I can never get my photos to come out perfectly square, so I use the Gimp perspective tool to correct. (Gimp can do the cropping/scaling as well, of course.)
