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Thread: Digital Restoration Book

  1. #1
    Pachi Puro emmadog's Avatar
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    Default Digital Restoration Book

    As I get further involved in this hobby, my interest in restoring these machines has grown to where I can't leave a machine as-is. Even though it may be clean, it's just not enough. Disassembling all the components and then determining the best way to restore them is quite a satisfying challenge.
    On these machines, a huge part of the appeal and "personality" is the playfield design. Unfortunately, this area also easily suffers from the effects of time and wear. Such as fading and water damage. A few of us have reproduced playfields using adhesive vinyl with excellent results. Now there is a book entitled "Digital Restoration Secrets: Restore Antiques, Arcade Games and Pinball" available from Amazon and gamerroommag.com.
    I just received my copy and I can tell you it takes all the guesswork out of how to go about reproducing labels, stickers, graphics, etc. The focus is on doing this digitally using either a scanner or photographing the object and uploading to a computer. The author describes how to do this in general and then offers a couple of tutorials using Photoshop and Adobe. Just a few of the things revealed are what files to save your images in to suit print shops, the correct color scheme to be used so that the printed copies will faithfully represent the original, pitfalls to avoid, etc.
    For those interested in complete refurbs, this book is a huge time saver. I wish I had it when redoing my Jan Ball as I had to start over many times on the cel art simply because I didn't know the correct files and formats to use and wasn't aware of the many editing shortcuts available. There's also an interesting section on how the author got into doing this in the first place. It involves another of my great interests and that is 80's era arcade games. I had several in my house some years ago and enjoyed them quite a bit. The book details how at the time, there were no places in which to get repro arcade graphics so he created his own and his business was born.
    Last edited by emmadog; 07-01-2010 at 06:17 PM.

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  3. #2
    Pachi Puro emmadog's Avatar
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    Default Re: Digital Restoration Book

    Pic of cover.
    Attached Images Attached Images

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    Kungishi candyflip's Avatar
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    Default Re: Digital Restoration Book

    Is it actually a 'book'? Looks more like photocopied sheets.

    I know the emphasis is on the content (most important), but just wondering what the production quality is like, in your opinion.
    There is always another machine around the corner...

  6. #4
    Pachi Puro emmadog's Avatar
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    Default Re: Digital Restoration Book

    Yes it's an actual 70 page softcover book with black and white photos. He provides links to the original color photos online. The quality is as nice as any other softcover. The covers are high gloss paper and the interior pages are typical quality paper. To me, it's a steal at 20 bucks from gameroommag.com. Amazon is cheaper but I like to support the former.
    Last edited by emmadog; 07-01-2010 at 08:40 PM.

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    Eye Shooter Microbus99's Avatar
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    Default Re: Digital Restoration Book

    Yes this is a great book to get you started. I've had mine for about 6 months now. I also purchased the CD which had great tips for using PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator, etc. There's also a few tutorials that were helpful.

    I bought mine directly from Gameroommag as well.

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