Wrinkled Cover

Does anyone know of a technique to remove the wrinkles from the cover or scanned image? I have searched for a bit and can not find a good image of this cover and mine is wrinkled. The existing release cover is too small for the 1200px Picard option and is a 72dpi screen only image.
Release


My cover.

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I’m afraid it’s pretty much impossible because it’s not only the wrinkles themselves, but also the shadows around it that you would have to remove. You could try playing around with GIMP’s heal selection plugin, but you might end up with something too artificial.

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Whatever else you please add your raw scan that includes the crinkles/damage. And annotate both it and any repaired images to make clear that it is the basis from which you’ve worked.

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Looking at the scan, I think you could improve it a lot by carefully trying to bend it a bit straighter (especially the sharper folds), and then scan it again by putting good pressure (weight) on the cover. You can e.g. do that by putting a heavy book on top of it.

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I would always prefer a real cover with wrinkles over a heavily photoshopped cleaned up version. Personally I think the image you show looks fine as it is. It is a real scan, so there are real blemishes.

First use of images at MB is for identifying releases. So please upload the wrinkled one anyway. Then, if you need a cleaned up one for your own use, then out with The Gimp or Paint.net and use the clone tool on the wrinkles.

With the way it is cropped you need to be careful of touching up too much as it will stop looking like a cover.

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Like @IvanDobsky, I think this scan is already very good like it is and I wouldn’t loose more time altering it. :slight_smile:

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IMHO I would also appreciate having an original for identification purposes! Another editor down the road might have a better scan and replace it later. :grinning:

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I’m going to buck the trend here and say that if this were my upload, I’d probably fix the image. The part that’s wrinkled is just solid color with no text or graphic elements, so painting over it with a clone brush wouldn’t erase any significant detail from the image. I usually try to fix scratches or wrinkles if I can do so without disturbing anything significant.

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I will try to smooth the wrinkles out and add weight then scan again. i will upload it and one manipulated with Photoshop to get everyone’s opinion. Thank you for all the feedback.

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Here are the results

Pressure and massaging the wrinkles

Added photoshop healing tool.

  • Pressure and massaging
  • Photoshop Healing

0 voters

Nice massaging :wink:
Now it’s rather easy for the square-obsessive to create a nice and compact jpg from it:

(I think I have accidentally voted for the Photoshop healing, I intended to vote for the massage)

You can change your vote by clicking the Hide results button. :slight_smile:

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Ah thanks.
I see I voted correctly, it’s the fact that the two options switch top/bottom places when pressing ‘hide’ that probably confused me.

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Taking this a little bit further/general: I think it would be nice to have a ‘clean’ version functioning as ‘front’ (see also thread for square uploads).

But then please add the original scan as well, as me thinks that MB and the Archive is really about storing true information, so including original scans that contain most ‘true’ information.

I wrote a tutorial on wrinkle removal for fanart.tv: https://fanart.tv/tutorials/remove-wrinkles-kinks-and-paper-texture-from-scanned-cover-art/

There are scanners with a dual light source that will do essentially the same thing while scanning. I bought one (Epson Perfection V600) to make scanning 7" covers easier, but it had pretty extreme chromatic aberrations in the shadows of uneven objects, so I returned it. I still have to do this process manually, but it certainly is worth the effort.

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I would take the massaged pic and eliminate that dark fold above the C.

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From this point forward I will take all the advice giving and upload the original and fixed versions with the fixed version in the first spot for display and tagging purposes with a comment and the original in the second spot with the raw box checked.

@ZincRider that is an awesome solution.

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@ZincRider Thanks for the link and the comprehensive treatise. Nicely done!