Photoshop fun with Frazetta

Here's another recent restoration job -- of a different sort -- but still using Photoshop. I found this Canaveral Press edition of Tarzan at the Earth's Core at a local Half Price Books for just a couple bucks. It's an ex-library copy, in dust jacket -- a little rough in spots, but in fairly good shape over all -- except for the front endpapers.

As you can see, this remarkable Frank Frazetta illustration of a saber-toothed tiger has has a library card pocket glued over it. Try as I might, there was no removing the pocket without damaging the illustration underneath. No glue remover or technique that I know of would lift the damned thing off. Now, as I said, I only paid a couple bucks for the book -- I could live with this one negative aspect -- except, I figured a fairly simple way to fix the problem.

Years ago, I scraped up the dough to purchase a copy of the three volume, slipcased Edgar Rice Burroughs Library of Illustration from Russ Cochran. In one of those books is that same saber-toothed tiger illo, shot from the original art. So, with the help of my scanner and Photoshop, I copied the illo, changed the black ink line to a brown that matched the inks used on the endpapers, and printed it on a similar weight paper. I then used an ink wash to tint the paper to match the Canaveral Press book's endpapers.
The next step was to remove the unfixable endpapers -- and replace them with my newly created version. So there you have it -- the book is still not the greatest condition copy ever -- but now when I open it up, I see a gorgeous Frank Frazetta drawing unmarred by a Hennepin County Library card pocket. This isn't exactly a museum quality restoration -- but heck, it's a whole lot better than it was -- and it makes me happy. Not bad for two bucks and a little scanner/Photoshop time.

And it's a darn good book, too.