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Old 07-28-2006, 09:43 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rancho Sahuarita
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I agree that it looks fake overall

I just want to note that color printing in earlier processes was far poorer than more recently. It was quite common to outline objects in the black plate by hand to make the image sharper. Big outfits like Time/Life had much better processes than were used in many books (and therefore didn't need this handwork). This book was printed in '78, late enough to be better, but was on semi-matte paper, with poor contrast, and all the color images seem to have poor blacks. These two in particular have brownish lowlights instead of true black. Color balance on other pages varies all over the map. Anyway, it's hard to tell how many stages of manipulation this went through between 1953 and 1978, for either artistic rendition or just to get the plates to an acceptable level of color and detail.
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