Hi-Res box/manual cover scans available?

[Mirage]

Does anyone know if there's high-res scans available anywhere of either the manual art or the box art of all Atari-brand 2600 games? I've been trying to collect every color manual with the intent of making high-res scans of the cover art for projects like wallpaper (and other things). If someone's already done this, it would save me the trouble (and move this project on a lot faster).

 

By high-res, I mean at least 300dpi high-quality scans at 100% of original size. At least... preferably twice that, or more.

 

Having these high-res scans of the box art would be great, since the boxes look so nice as a whole, but the box printing quality tends to be of lower quality (due to being printed on cardboard rather than a thinner, higher-quality paper), so ideally, I'd like to get scans of the box art, and the manual art so I could merge from one to the other as necessary, or re-create certain elements with Illustrator, etc.

 

If anyone has any information on sources of scans like this, please let me know. Thanks.

Edited January 22, 2008 by Mirage1972

[tremoloman2006]

I only own about 20 boxed games and 40 manuals at this time, but I'd be willing to scan in everything I own to assist in the creation of a high-res collection if there is interest. (I can scan as high as 1200 dpi)

Edited January 22, 2008 by tremoloman2006

[Rom Hunter]

Might as well make scans of the box backs too, so I can add them to the database.

 

[Mirage]

I only own about 20 boxed games and 40 manuals at this time, but I'd be willing to scan in everything I own to assist in the creation of a high-res collection if there is interest. (I can scan as high as 1200 dpi)

 

That would be fantastic if it's something you feel like doing! I'm mostly interested in the Atari-brand color boxes/manuals (as opposed to silver/red...), but we should all sort of vote on what's worth doing at this time probably, if there's enough interest.

 

Remember, these files are going to be large, so that needs to be kept in mind when deciding on dpi. I would like to have 1200dpi scans, but that's not going to be practical to host online, or even to distribute online except as a torrent, maybe.

 

Ideally, I'd like to get them as TIF files for my purposes (but they're going to be really really big), and any hi-res scans that are saved as jpg for smaller file size should be saved at MAX quality (Photoshop quality 12), otherwise they're not going to be suitable for the purposes I have in mind (high quality prints for various projects). For more casual online distribution, they could be saved with a little more jpg compression to get the file size down a little. The more I think about it, the more I think 900-1200dpi scans would be best, if it's something we could do... so the box text and other linework would reproduce well... I'd hate to have to re-create all that!

 

So, any other ideas, thoughts, suggestions? How can we do this? Is there demand? If there's just no interest, I'll just start scanning as I get them over time.

 

Thanks guys. I think we could do some really neat things with some hi-res scans!

 

BTW, I've been an imaging/print professional for over 10 years, so I can clean up/modify/color correct a large amount of images quickly and to good result.

Edited January 22, 2008 by Mirage1972

[Mirage]

Might as well make scans of the box backs too, so I can add them to the database.

 

 

Maybe you could host a smaller (like medium-res) version of anything that is scanned, unless you mean an offline database, because the size of the scans I'm talking about you wouldn't be able to host online!

[Mirage]

Update... at my count, there are only 58 Atari-brand color boxes (not counting variations and stuff like Action Pack/32-in-1 etc).

 

Just focusing on those to start with, it seems like this is an achievable project, if there's interest. We could make them available (somehow) to anyone who wants them, and we could do some neat things with them, maybe like the Atari-box wallpaper that was mentioned in a different thread!

 

I have 16 Atari-brand color boxes myself, so we'd just need around 42 more of those. I have probably the majority of the color manuals, too, so I'd have a good chunk of those I could scan myself. I'll volunteer to do all the clean-up and image editing, as that's what I do for a living anyway, so noodling around with that for awhile would be no big deal.

[bah]

Check out the cover project. Those guys do not have a lot of scans but their artwork is at 600dpi and usually cleaned up from scratches and stickers, etc. The downside is that they reformat box scans for use with the plastic after-market game covers and that a typical scan is from 4 to 6 mb. Good site for all systems.

 

http://www.thecoverproject.net/

 

BAH

[Mirage]

Check out the cover project. Those guys do not have a lot of scans but their artwork is at 600dpi and usually cleaned up from scratches and stickers, etc. The downside is that they reformat box scans for use with the plastic after-market game covers and that a typical scan is from 4 to 6 mb. Good site for all systems.

 

http://www.thecoverproject.net/

 

BAH

 

That's great! I hadn't heard of that! I only downloaded one so far (Super Breakout), and that one is at 300dpi (at 100% of the Universal Game Case, so that ends up being between 200-300dpi -- unacceptable). It's a decent enough scan for 300dpi though. I can use those for some things, though, but not the main projects (now, at 600 dpi, maybe). They only have 7 Atari-brand NTSC color covers so far.

 

Thanks for the tip!

 

EDIT: The universal game case size is significantly smaller than an original 2600 box, thereby making these scans less than 300dpi... so... not usable for what I have in mind. They end up being more like medium-res, rather than high-res.

Edited January 23, 2008 by Mirage1972

[tremoloman2006]

So are we talking about the front and back only?

Or would I need to take the box and flatten it to scan?

 

I'll get my scanner out in the next couple of days and experiment to see what I can come up with.

[Mirage]

So are we talking about the front and back only?

Or would I need to take the box and flatten it to scan?

 

I'll get my scanner out in the next couple of days and experiment to see what I can come up with.

 

*I* would say just front and back. But, if there's anyone else interested in this (maybe there's not? How could there not be?), I think it would be nice to get some kind of vote or input. Maybe there's a demand for hires scans of the whole box so people could make replica boxes if they want to?

 

Either way, I wouldn't flatten anything. Easy enough to get a scan of the side of the box without flattening. Well, in theory it shouldn't be hard, but I haven't tried it yet either. See what you can come up with, that would be great! If I get time, I'll try to do the same if I can get my old scanner working on a computer I have now.