[Dixielandjazz] LPs to CDs - album covers

[David Richoux]

Jerry Gordon wrote:
> 
> When I retire in 2 weeks, one of my projects is to transfer a good chunk
> of my ~1800 LPs onto CDs. There's been a lot of previous discussion of
> the audio aspects, but that's not my question (today).
> 
> Does anyone have a good way of getting the record jacket info into some
> format that will fit in a CD case?

Some new reissues (or unauthorized CD "reprints") we have received at KFJC have
reproductions of the original artwork and text in the CD liner notes - if this is
not done well it is worse than nothing!

For your own home-brew copies, it really depends on the amount and size of the text
in the liner notes - if you have a good flatbed scanner and can then shrink the
image to print on a good laser or inkjet printer in the size you need- that will
sometimes work. You will probably have to make several passes and then join the
images together unless you have a 12" wide scanner or a good digital camera ;-) If
that won't make it, then you might have to use an OCR program to capture the text
and re-format it (maybe into a multi page booklet) using a text/art application like
Adobe Illustrator - this is NOT a very easy task with the quality of most OCR
programs around today. 

A lot of the text on older LPs (especially on low production OKOM records, it seems)
is pretty thin, worn, printed on odd colors and difficult for OCRs to accurately
interpret, in my experience ...

If the computer direction won't work you might still be able to get photo reductions
from a blueprint or graphic arts shop but those services are getting harder and
harder to find.  Another way might be to use a 120mm film size camera and make
prints to size. One would probably need a magnifying glass to read some of the text...


Dave Richoux 

(BTW, I helped design several high quality OCR scanners for a major Silicon Valley
company a few years ago - nothing but trouble! )