Airscrews and post -production

[Jmk89]

Airscrews.

I have just scanned my copy of Ron Warring's Airscrews for Models (called on the cover Airscrews for the Aeromodeller) from 1942 and submitted it to the Plans Gallery.

One reason for this doing this is that the copy of Airscrews that was on the old HPA (and RC Bookcase and RC Library) has very high contrast so that the photographs come out as black smudges.

Accordingly, when I scanned my copy, I used the "greyscale" setting for every page that had a photograph on it and the "black and white" setting for pages with just text or diagrams.

I'm just wondering if people could indicate what they prefer in these situations. The antiquarian side of me thinks that it would be best to scan these in colour so that you get the full flavour of the paper degradation and the and you can see the state of the book now. The perfectionist side says that we should go for the thing that looks most like how it would look if produced new today. In that case it would be very high contrast text on white pages and the photographs would be as clear as possible.

I have let the "perfectionist" side prevail, but that does mean that there is a difference in the colour of the page, depending on whether there is a photo on the page or not (i.e. whether there are greys on the page, rather than black and white). The moment you try to preserve the mid-tones with a book that has browned as badly as this (and the same applies to early magazines), the greater is the risk of a loss of contrast and discolouration, and a grey shade for the background.

[g_kandylakis]

Hi Jeremy,

I do not see anything awaiting validation.

Did you or are you going to upload it?

George

[Jmk89]

I thought I had but there was an internet interruption, si it might have dropped off.
I'll upload again

[TheLurker]

I'm firmly in favour of legibility and being able to use the information contained in the publication without having to resort to guess-work. 

[Jmk89]

The issue of Airscrews is now uploaded and I've got the success message.  When you look through it, see if the photos are clear enough and that the text is legible and let me know - either by a post in this thread or by DM

[g_kandylakis]

In the gallery