See, that's all there is to it!
Seriously though, nice job! Just by looking I thought you had cut out the tracks and reproduced the halftones. Sounds like you did it the hard way, but more accurate.
PS hello.
> > This bezel took quite a bit of work to clean up, as it's mostly halftones. Where > there was just a small scratch or color blemish, I used the clone stamp tool, and > made sure that the halftone dots in the stamped area lined up with those in the area > that needed fixing. > > The scanned image had a number of vertical strips where the colors were lighter or > darker, or there was a sharp dark line, or what looked like a crease in the actual > bezel running from top to bottom. What I would usually do to fix these is select a > clean vertical area to the right or left of the area to be replaced, with a feathered > edge of a few pixels, copy and paste it. This creates a new layer with only this > strip on it. Nudge it over until it covers the offending area, then fine-tune it if > necessary by skewing or distorting until the halftones line up perfectly with the > bezel artwork on the layer underneath. > > The hardest part was fixing the bottom of the bezel, where something must have > happened during the scan because that whole area is much darker than it should be, > and the otherwise straight rows of halftones have a bit of waviness to them. I > created a new layer and made a grayscale gradient, approximating the percentages of > black that the original halftones should have been. After ascertaining the correct > line screen and fiddling with the grayscale levels a bit, I turned the gradient into > a halftone and knocked out the white background so only the black dots remained on > the layer. I lined it up with the actual bezel halftones, which required a little > fudging with scaling and placement. When I was satisfied with the alignment, I used > layer style > color overlay, and eyedroppered the correct color. I also gave the > halftone layer a very slight blur to match the existing bezel's halftones, they were > too sharp otherwise. > > Just two more steps left: one, paint in the correct orange background color over the > darker orange color at the bottom, covering up the existing halftones in that area as > well. Second, make a duplicate of the original bezel layer and remove everything > except the train tracks at the bottom, then make this the topmost layer so it covers > the new orange and halftone areas (actually, this step should have been done before > the one above). Flatten image or combine layers once you're happy with the results, > otherwise the number of layers can get out of hand. > > Normally, when you're dealing with large areas of solid color that need to be fixed, > you can just use the magic wand tool and some judicious modifying of the selection; > then fill in with the appropriate color and you're done. Dealing with halftones is a > different story if you want to keep the halftoned look; you have to tackle each area > independently, as the dots can be a different size than those just 1/4" away. The > good thing is that results don't have to be perfect; in fact, if you look close-up at > halftones on bezels and marquees from the 80's you'll see a lot of halftone dots that > are filled in, have some degree of dot gain, or are even missing, so the original > printing has an imperfect look to it. Personally, I think that adds to the charm of > the 30-year-old artwork.
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