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Hello Spike,
As you requested no comments from me or Venizelos, I waited someone else thanked you for your 'cleaning' efforts and Lewcoors did.
Now, I'm free to congratulate you once again for these marvelous improvements. And it's not a false comment. I'm really impressed by your (apparent) ease in removing text from scanning images.
Thanks

Excelente aporte Spike, muchas gracias.

Simply Fantastic job Spike; your contributions are great and although I participate little (despite belonging to the forum for a long time), I appreciate what you upload to increase the collection.

Thanks for the comments from Venizelos, MikeCorleone, Faraon, Tomcalover and Lewcoors.

It means a lot to have some positive feedback and helps keep me motivated.

 

Lots more still to come...

Set376 - Club US Aug 1998 / Playbirds #242, Dec 1999

Here is another 2-for-1 restoration, this time for Set376 (Suze 1739h). 

They come from two sets of scans from these two magazines:

Club US, Aug 1999	Playbirds #242, Dec 1999

None of these are my original scans.  The scans were all relatively poor quality, with large gaps at the page folds and poor colour balance, so it's been quite challenging splicing the photos together and getting the colours matched.  It was also quite difficult filling in the text and insets due the complex background, but I'm now reasonably happy with the results.

Without further ado, here are the restored pages and individual photos.

Club US , Aug 1998

Pages:

page000	page004	page154-155	page156-157	page158-159
page160-161

Photos:

001	002 (inset removed)	003 (spliced)	004	005
006	007 (spliced)	008 (spliced)	009	010
011 (spliced, inset removed)	012	013	014	015 (spliced)
016	017	018 (spliced)	019 (text removed)

Playbirds #242, Dec 1999

Pages:

page046-047	page048-049	page050-051	page052-053	page054

Photos:

000	001 (spliced, text removed, insets filled)	002	003	004 (insets filled)
005 (spliced, insets removed)	006 (spliced, insets removed)	007	008	009
010 (spliced, insets removed)

 

Catalogue Update

I'm pleased to say that all 19 photos from the Club US Aug 1998 scans are entirely new to the catalogue, which is extremely unusual for these Suze Randall sets.

The majority of the Playbirds photos are already in the catalogue but with ugly stripes up the middle and insets filled with white and variable colour balance.  Hopefully these restored versions can be used to update the existing catalogue photos:

	Catalogue	Playbirds  Restored Photo	Playbirds Restored Page
set376_081		001 (spliced, text removed, insets filled)	page046-047 (spliced)
set376_082		002
set376_083	set376_083	003
set376_084		004 (insets filled)
set376_085		008
set376_086		009
set376_087		010
set376_088		005 (spliced, insets removed)	page050-051 (spliced)
set376_089		006 (spliced, insets removed)	page052-053 (spliced)

The remaining Playbirds photos (the inset photos on pages 47 and 53) may also be considered new to the catalogue:

000	007

Bonus

Finally, as a small bonus, one of the vignette photos from the Club US scans gave me a chance to restore a photo I previously posted on this thread from Men's World Vol 11 Issue 2, Feb 1998, which was censored for the UK market in that edition:

set052_017 Mens World Vol 11 Iss 2	set052_017a Club US Aug 1998

-- Edited by spike on Thursday 6th of July 2023 09:49:07 AM

Great job Spike

What about the vignet of Playbirds page 47 ? It seems different than 376_15 or not ?  So, perhaps a new pic for the catalog ?

-- Edited by adamtomcalova on Wednesday 5th of July 2023 05:18:33 PM

Set339/Set354 

Another double magazine update from these two magazines:

'Big Man Internacional' Feb 2003 (Brazil)	'Playstar' June 2006 (Poland)

 

'Playstar', June 2006

This set consists of just three pages from a Polish magazine.  The original scans were very poor quality, with what looks like water damage and an ugly grey-green tinge to the colour balance.  To see what I mean, here are the originals:

I've attempted to clean up the photos as best I can and the colour balance has also been adjusted to be less yellow and more vibrant.

I've spliced the double-page spread together and extracted the individual images.  In particular, I have removed the text and filled the insets in the main photo from pages 1 and 2.  I have also removed all the text from the cover photo, which was a bit of a challenge given how busy it is. 

Pages:

page000	page001-002

Photos:

000 Text removed. Corrected orientation.	001	002	003	004
005	006 Text removed. Insets filled.

 

'Big Man Internacional' Edition 456, Year 17 No 2,  Feb 2003

This set is from a Brazilian magazine, the scans of which were of mixed quality and annoyingly littered with watermarks for "Sweet Silvia Saint Scans" as you can see here:

I have attempted to piece these together into a coherent set of pages that I believe  would have been the way they were presented in the original magazine. 

I've also fixed the splicing of the photos split by the page join, extracted all the individual photos, removed any logos/text, and filled insets as necessary. 

Pages:
*Edit:  fixed page order based on additional info just found.

page000	page001-002	page003-004	page005-006	page007-008
page009-010	page011-012

Photos:

All photos had a "Sweet Silvia Saint Scans/www.sweetsilviasaint.com" logo, which I have removed.

I also tried to remove the text from the cover photo, but decided to leave the background as is, to keep the "artistic" look.

000 Text removed.	001 Fixed page join. Removed text and title.	002	003 Corrected orientation.	004
005	006	007	008	009
010 Filled inset.	011	012 Fixed page join.	013 Fixed page join. Removed inset.	014 Fixed page join. Removed overlap from 013.
015

Catalogue Update

There are a few updates to the catalogue and some entirely new photos.

All the Playstar photos are new to the catalogue, although some are very similar to existing photos (see below).

The majority of the Internacional photos are already included in the catalogue, but in low resolution, poorly edited form and with text and logos.  There are also differently cropped versions of existing photos with improved resolution, which might be worth adding as variants.  Like Playstar, there are also similar photos to existing ones, but they are actually distinct if you look closely enough.

Updated Photos

I propose the following updates to existing photos in the catalogue:

Catalogue Photo	Replace with Internacional Photo	Comment
set339_021	003	Much better resolution. Corrected orientation. Removed logo.
set339_003	007	Much better resolution. Removed logo.
set339_006	008	Much better resolution. Removed logo.
set354_029	006	Removed logo. Perhaps add as set354_029a?
set354_039	001	Improved page join. Text and logo removed.
set354_040	002	Removed centrefold line. Removed banner and logo.
set354_041	005	Removed logo.
set354_042	012	Improved page join. Removed logo.
set354_043	011	Removed logo.
set354_044	010	Removed inset photo. Removed logo.
set354_045	014	Improved page join. Removed logo. Removed overlap.
set354_046	015	Removed logo.
set354_047	013	Extracted individual photo. Removed logo. Filled inset.

 

New Photos

The following photos are actually all new to the catalogue, although some are very similar to existing photos but are different if you look closely enough (see comments):

Internacional	Similar to	Comment
004	set354_013	Slight difference in position of Silvia's head. Check position of the top of Silvia's head relative to the grass verge above the swimming pool wall.  Same photo as Playstar 004, but better quality.
009	set339_010 set339_023	Differences in the position of strands of hair across Silvia's face.
010	set354_018	Right hand not visible. Left leg raised slightly higher.
Playstar
000	set339_008	Lower camera angle.  Different head tilt.
001	set339_056	Difference of position of the fingers of Silvia's right hand.
002	set354_021	Difference in tilt of Silvia's head.
003	N/A	Entirely new photo.
004	set354_013	Slight difference in position of Silvia's head. Check position of the top of Silvia's head relative to the grass verge above the swimming pool wall. Same photo as Internacional 004, which is less cropped and better resolution.
005	set354_018	Different position of Silvia's right hand.
006	set354_022	Slight difference in the position of Silvia's bottom. Check the fold of the sheet above her right buttock.

-- Edited by spike on Tuesday 18th of July 2023 12:42:48 AM

Nice work on these Spike.

Set044 - Puritan Video Magazine 15

Here's a nice cover photo from the movie Puritan Video Magazine 15 that I found recently. 

It appears to be an uncatalogued photo for Set044, and the quality is sufficiently good that I thought it was worthwhile attempting to clean it up by removing all the text and watermarking.

Original	Restored

Hopefully it's worth inclusion in the catalogue. I'd say it belongs between set044_050 and 051 in the series, but it is probably more sensible to add it on at the end as an extra photo.

Update:

While I was at it, I thought it would be fun cleaning up the photo for set044_112, even though it's quite small. 

So I've picked Silvia out of the photo, placed her in a more convincing background, and upscaled to 1592px to match the existing photos in the set.

Original	Restored	Expanded	Enhanced

-- Edited by spike on Wednesday 26th of July 2023 09:04:10 PM