The border was altered to "tile" properly and the colors were smoothed out and faded. The floral ornament was trimmed, resampled, and rotated, and the anti-aliasing was touched up by hand.
The original file is an 1150 x 1500 pixel 256-gray-scale .jpg. Several transformations were used to create the image you see here. The look I was after was an old faded picture-book on heavy textured paper. The first manipulation was to adjust the color balance (R -10, G -20, B -50) to get the rusty-off-black ink color in place of true black and neutral grays. This left the background a dull mustard color, for which I substituted an ivory using the color replacer tool. The color depth was increased to 16 million colors to allow me to resample the drawing to 250 x 339; then I applied a sharpening filter to reduce the muzziness and break up the lines. The whole picture was marqueed and modified to 50% opacity and saved as a 31KB .jpg.
The original .jpg was scanned from a very old, yellowed copy of the Stevenson novel. I adjusted the red, green, and blue components to more nearly match similar Wyeth illustrations recently reproduced from the originals. The picture was cropped, resampled to size, and bordered.
The original file is a 300 dpi .jpg from a rather muddy 1923 reproduction; it has been lightened and brightened. The "Christian Heroes Tapestry" is in the Cloisters Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
I started with a world map at the Xerox PARC Map Viewer (now, alas, deactivated) and zoomed in to a useful close-up of Britain and Ireland, using the "color" and "add rivers" options. The result was a .gif file with the landmasses outlined in black, latitude and longitude lines in light grey, and rivers in light blue. I increased the color depth to 16 million (24-bit color) and used the PSP color replacer tool to edit out the latitude and longitude lines; to replace the rivers with a lighter blue; and to replace the black landmass outlines with a dark olive color. Then I resampled the map to 200% (which resulted in muzzier coastlines and more room for text labels). I filled the landmass with an off-center sunburst gradient from white to light olive, and the oceans with a similarly off-center sunburst gradient in a dull gray-green-blue.
I added the names of bodies of water, cities, islands, and territories, using a map of Roman Britain at the British Cultural Studies site at Linköpings Universitet in Sweden and the detailed maps of the Saxon Shore and Hadrian's Wall donwloaded from The Saxon Shore as sources. (The fonts are 8pt. Times New Roman for bodies of water and 8 or 9 pt. Albertus Medium for cities and territories, the territories being double-letter-spaced all caps.)
I resampled the file back to about two-thirds its original height and applied a sharpening filter. I added a double border in olive and wine (nicely evocative of the Romans!). To smooth out the gradient fills, I reduced the color depth to 256 using error diffusion and then increased it to 16 million again so the file could be saved as a .jpg. At my usual settings (100 dpi, 50% compression) the .jpg was riddled with distracting artifacts, and I finally settled on using only 15% compression. The final file is 31KB.
Morris did a series of illustrations of musicians, of which this is one. The drawings were later used by Morris and Co. as designs for textiles as well as glazed tiles (as in this example).
The original is in Kodak Photo-CD (.pcd) format. It was cropped and resampled to size. The scans on this PlanetArt CD tend to be dark and muddy, so I increased both the brightness and contrast 10 percent. The file that appears here is a 100 dpi .jpg.
The original is an anti-aliased 256-color gray scale .jpg. I used the color replacer tool to replace white with ivory, then resampled to size and saved the file as a .jpg.
A scan from an old edition of the classic. I adjusted the color balance, softened the foxing, and tweaked the brightness.
Another anti-aliased 256-color gray scale .jpg. I reduced the color depth to 16 colors, edited the palette to replace white with ivory, then increased the color depth to 16 million, resampled to size, added the black border, and saved the file as a .jpg.
Robert Ball's illustrations for Tennyson had a profound influence on my taste in illustrating medieval subjects; I'm as fond of these drawings now as I was thirty years ago.
Another anti-aliased 256-color gray scale .jpg. I reduced the color depth to 16 colors, edited the palette to replace white with ivory, then increased the color depth to 16 million, resampled to size, and added the black border. I used an ivory flood fill with a tolerance of 20 to even out the "background" which was mottled with "artifacts" from the original .jpg compression and resampling. The resulting file was saved as a transparent .gif.
A full-color .jpg. I reduced the contrast and added the border.
Scanned from the 1919 printing and color-corrected in Paint Shop Pro.
One of my favorite illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. I heavily modified this scan from an old, unevenly-faded print. Most significantly, I reduced the saturation, increased the brightness and contrast, and tweaked the color balance; I then "glazed" the picture with a semi-transparent overlay of dull navy at 22 percent opacity and another of reddish-brown at 12 percent opacity. The result approaches (but sadly does not match) the rich color of Wyeth's original painting.
A haunting painting and one of my favorites. The original is a .jpg; I adjusted the gamma, resized the picture, and added the border.
The original 2-color black-and-white .gif was cropped. Ivory was substituted for the white background by editing the palette, and the color depth was increased to 16 million so the picture could be resampled to size. The palette was reduced to 16 colors and the final pictures were saved as transparent .gifs.
Detail of a .jpg image from the Scriptorium Dulac collection, cropped, brightened, and bordered.
To remove the scanning artifacts, I softened, resized, and sharpened this .jpg, and added the border.
I've always been fond of the highly stylized illustrations of Kay Nielsen, with their attentuated figures and flat, dense patterns. This picture is one of my favorites; I think it captures the otherworldly feel of the fairy ballads.
This scan is a full-color .jpg; I resampled to size, sharpened the faces, dropped the blue 7% and the green 2%, and added the dark green border.
Two more anti-aliased 256-color gray scale .jpg files. I reduced the blue component by 10% and the green component by 5%, increased the color depth to 16 million, resampled to size, applied a sharpening filter (and in the case of the Pirate Ship, added the black border), and saved the files as .jpgs.
A very dark, muddy 1500-pixel-wide full-color .jpg. I put this one through a series of incremental adjustments; the net result was to boost the blue component, drop the red and green components, and increase both brightness and contrast. The file was resampled to size and saved as a .jpg.
The original is a grey-scale .jpg; I cropped and colored it, and saved it as a transparent .gif. The entire map, in a different coloring, is at Renaissance.
Detail of a painting from The Pageant of a Nation, reproduced at the Library of Congress.
The original is a muddy 5" wide .jpg. Both brightness and contrast were increased about 20%, and the picture was resampled to size.
The original is a black-and-white .jpg; it was colored and resampled to size. The cross-guards were originally cropped by a border, which has been removed; the "missing" pieces of the cross-guards were copied-and-pasted from their opposite sides.
This gray-scale .jpg was reduced to 2 colors (black and white), and again that was changed to olive-black and ivory by editing the palette directly. The picture was then converted to 24-bit color, resampled to size, and saved as a .jpg.
Another gray-scale .jpg; the colors were adjusted by dropping the blue component and tweaking the brightness and contrast. The drawing was resampled and then sharpened, and saved as a .jpg.
The .jpg was resampled to size, and the brightness and contrast were increased 20 percent. The border is added.
This color .jpg was resampled to size. The brightness and contrast were both increased about 15%, and the black border was added. [Thanks to Pat Scott for identifying the artist.]
The original is a 2-color black-and-white .gif. The picture was cropped, ivory was subsitituted for the white background, and the result was resampled to size. The final output is a transparent .gif.
This color .jpg was resampled to size and the colors were warmed slightly to correct the faded yellows in the original. The border is added.
Another dark scanned .jpg, automatically contrast-balanced using Paint Shop Pro and slightly color-corrected. The border is added.
This is the so-called "Flower Portrait," brought to light in 1840; it now seems that this portrait is a derivative of the Droeshout engraving rather than its source (see S. Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives, the New Edition of 1991, for a discussion of the portrait).
The original .jpg is muddy and decidedly green. I reduced the green component and boosted red and blue, increased both the brightness and contrast by about 10%, and resampled the picture to size. I applied a softening filter and then a sharpening filter to even out the skin tones; the result is is far less bilious than the deteriorated original.
Another 256-color gray scale .jpg. This time I dropped the blue component about 10% and used the color-replacer to turn the background ivory. I increased the color depth to 16 million, resampled the drawing to size, and saved the file as a .jpg.
A large full-color .jpg. I reduced the color depth to 256 and then increased it again to 16 million before resampling to size, which reduced the muzziness of the resampled picture. I increased the brightness 10% and the contrast 5%, brought up the midtones slightly, and added a border.
This white-on-black pattern was colored and saved as a .gif.
The original is a grey-scale .jpg. I boosted the red component by 35% and green by 25%, tinted the white background dark ivory, and resampled to size.
Another 256-color grey-scale .jpg. This time I reduced the color depth to 16 colors and hand-edited each grey tone to get the effect I wanted. I increased the color depth to 16 million, resampled to size, and saved the file as a .jpg.
An old .jpg, resized and bordered.
The original is a slightly muddy full-color .jpg. I boosted the saturation by 15 percent and brightened the picture by 7 percent, before resampling to size.
This picture was resampled to size to fit the page.
Another 256-color grey-scale .jpg. I used the "colorize" filter to make an umber-toned drawing, and replaced the white background with ivory. I resampled to size and saved the file as a .jpg.
This one is scanned at 300 dpi from my slightly faded copy. I reduced it 25%, cropped it slightly, and adjusted the brightness and contrast. Florence Harrison is an unjustly neglected artist of the Glasgow School.
The figure is by Morris, based on designs originally executed in 1866 for the ceiling at Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge. The background of fruit trees is by Dearle. The text is the opening lines of Morris's poem "The Orchard," published in Poems by the Way, 1891. The original tapestry is at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Another dark and fusty .jpg. I cropped the design slightly, brightened the colors, and increased the contrast by 20%. The picture is a 100 dpi .jpg.
This picture was scanned in two-color black-and-white mode at 300 dpi. In order, the palette was edited to change the white to ivory, the color depth was increased to 16 million, the picture was resampled to size, a sharpening filter was applied, and the file was saved as a 16-color .gif.
I just love the soft, mottled colors of old badly reproduced watercolors and pastel drawings. This detail was cropped from a larger picture and a new border was added; it is otherwise unchanged from the original .jpg.
