Well folks, it is a July 4th miracle.
I decided to give the search for the A Distant Soil negatives and digital files one more try, and it looks like the printer has found them. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. I just requested they return the files to me for archiving.
PLEASE don’t send any more art at this time. I will happily scan the art you have already sent me, but will examine the negatives and digital files when I receive them.
As you may imagine, I was feeling pretty blue about this, and have been so down about having to piece together my book from scratch again. For whatever reason, my earlier inquiries just didn’t get results, and this one did. Stuff happens. I am just SO GRATEFUL that the files are FOUND. This will save me months of work and many thousands of dollars.
I still have to archive every single page of negatives myself, but not having to pay someone else to do it, or to have art returned from around the planet is a great benefit.
If the files are all in good working order, then we should have no further problems.
c
HAPPY 4th! FREEEDDDDOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!
Great news!
Happy Happy Joy Joy!
Oh thank goodness!!! I’m so happy for you Colleen! (and happy for us
)
Oh, God, the relief, I cannot tell you!!!!!
I may have to have a sale on the site sooner rather than later to pay what is likely to be a whopping bill for this. So, stay tuned!
By the way, restoring this art: I was sure I was going to go blind. I have bottles of eye drops around the desk.
FANTASTIC NEWS! I guess you’ll still need to scan the negatives, but at least now you’ll have them all in one place and not have to track as much down!
Absolutely. Scanning the negatives is time consuming, but not rocket science.
Some of the scans from the originals were just terrible. It would probably take me more time to do complete restorations on a single page per issue than it would to just scan from the negatives.
Also, apparently, there are digital files going back to issue 19. I am a little concerned some of these will be Quark files. If I can’t open them, I am sure someone else can.
There may be gaps or some damaged files, but I’m betting it’s nothing we can’t deal with.
BTW, if these ARE the long missing digital files of my earlier issues, then that means I now have access to color art we thought was lost for good. Digital files of earlier cover art have been missing for over 6 years.
great news! Just let me know about that one piece if you still need it.
Any art anyone hasn’t sent yet, don’t send it. It will probably be in the negatives.
I tested scanning from negs this week against scanning from originals. No big difference at all. Only comes in handy when we need to do serious corrections (such as replacing tones,) which, for me, is easier on the originals. Our original printing plates look very clean to me. I was happy with the quality of most of the printing we got. In fact, on most of the printed pages that bothered me, I actually have those originals and have redone them already. They look so much cleaner.
I don’t know if I am making any sense here, but because we thought the negs were gone, I’ve been trying to scan all the originals. Since I didn’t know HOW to scan older art correctly to get around flaws on the paper or old tones sheets, my older scan efforts are just terrible. Even worse than scanning the art from the books!
Now we should have all ( or almost all) the negs. If so, I would not have to redo the entire series, but I would have to redo hundreds of pages. And restore many.
With the files found, what could have been months of work may end up taking a couple of weeks.
I’m sure there will be some flaws and mistakes, but what a blessing it is to know that many crucial pieces of art will be restored to the book, as good as new! So very happy!
And so very grateful to ALL the readers who offered to loan the art back! LOVE YOU GUYS~!
cool! I will hold off on sending the one I have then, I was unable to do the scanning on my own scanner and was looking into prices at a local business to do it for me.
Please do. EVERYONE hold off. The negatives I’ve examined so far are in excellent condition, shot in full color and convert very well. I tested a scan from the original against a scan from the negative, and in some cases, the scans from the negatives come out cleaner, probably because the art was shot immediately after being drawn, before flaws and scratches crept into the tone sheets. If we have all the negatives as well as the original scans, we’re gold. I’ll announce as soon as I have more details from the printer.
That is great! I’m so pleased for you! I’ve admired your commitment to producing the cleanest best version for the upcoming edition. It’s nice to hear such good news for someone who deserves a break!
