Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Technical Drawing of Historical Hot Air Balloon Designs

Technical Drawing of Historical Hot Air Balloon Designs edit

Original - Technical illustration showing early balloon designs: "Lana's aeronautic machine," "Montgolfiers' balloon," "Blanchard's balloon," "Garnerin ascending [and] descending" in his parachute, the "Charles & Roberts' balloon" being inflated, the "form of the wings employed by Lunardi," and the "form of the wings employed by Blanchard."

Edit - colour redone based on the original LOC scans; some additional cleanup.

Reason: High quality LOC scan of the state of aeronautics and hot air ballooning in 1818. Displays many different versions of hot air balloons of the time, many of which are quite fascinating. I admittedly just added it to the Hot air balloon article, where it definitely belongs. I found it at the Wikipedia for Schools site interestingly enough.
Articles this image appears in: Timeline of aviation - 19th century, History of ballooning, Hot air balloon
Creator: Ambrose William Warren, 1781?-1856, engraver. (Uploaded by Bubamara and CarolSpears it seems)

Support as nominator --ωαdεstεr16_«talk^stalk» 05:42, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. According to the image page the creator is "Warren, Ambrose William, 1781?-1856, engraver". You've listed the uploaders. Have made a change above in the nom. --jjron (talk) 11:08, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Good find. Perhaps an adjustment to the color balance would be in order? Highlights are deficient in blue. Durova^Charge! 21:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Request brief suspension - I'd like to have a go on an edit. There's some tricks you can do with engraving scans of this sort that will help this one a lot. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 18:04, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse Shoemaker's request Shoemaker's our best restorationist of engravings. It'd be fascinating to see what he does with this. Durova^Charge! 18:09, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Support alternate. Good job. Durova^Charge! 15:21, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Suspended pending Shoemaker's edit Noodle snacks (talk) 09:21, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done - Right. Done. I'll put this back up at the top of the page. I think that's right? Feel free to critique the colour - I have an LCD monitor, so colour is a bit angle-dependent, which can make precise matching a bit difficult. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 06:42, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the effort - I'm not really a graphical editor. ~ ωαdεstεr16_«talk^stalk» 16:32, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - No worries! It's one of those things that's not really all that hard if you know what you're doing, but the trick is learning what you're doing in the first place. =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 17:03, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - I've had a look at both the original and the edit and I'm finding it hard to notice any significant difference, other than the greater contrast/higher black point value. Durova mentioned that she thought the blue channel was deficient and looking at the histogram, it is. But correcting this would make the background a neutral light grey. I assume this is not what you intended to do. If anything, I see a greater deviation on the green channel in the edit, but to the eye, the colour is extremely similar - just a bit darker. Also, I'm curious about what exactly you tried to achieve in the edit as it doesn't seem explained here or on the image page. As I know very little about the technicalities of etchings/engravings, I wouldn't know what makes a good or a bad restoration of one. Given the paper has no doubt become faded/stained over the years, do you aim to restore it to as-close-as-new, or do you accept the colour of the scan but merely remove blemishes to the detail? Why do you trust the colour balance of the LOC version? Without knowing the answers to these restoration questions, I'd find it hard to judge this nomination and the two images beyond the artistic/historic value. :-) Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 19:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's a few different things I'm trying to achieve:

Firstly, ink should look reasonably black: Grey ink has a tendency to look "blurry", as the eye instinctively expects it to be black, and presumes deviance is from the black being blurred. I've almost never had reason to regret this trick.
The paper should be a reasonably-natural looking colour. It doesn't need to be a pristine white - that's very easy to generate from something like this for printing, anyway - just drop saturation and tweak the whitepoint - but it should look believably like paper. The old version didn't look quite natural, with regard to colour. I tried a few things, and in the end thought that matching the LOC scan showed a pleasantly-non-distracting sign of age - something I try to leave in my images. Of course, had I been working from a non-historic original, e.g. a modern reprint, or thought it likely this one would be used for printing (you do NOT fake paper texture when printing), I'd have immediately removed all paper texture and set the background paper as a pure white. In my experience, desaturating to greyscale looks ugly - it gives far too "cool" of colours to look natural - and requires you to either nearly or completely make the background white. But this image with a white background is already available. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:10, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There's a few minor bits of cleanup I did that were missed in the original. None were hugely visible - but they annoyed me.

I hope that helps. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:10, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, thanks for the explanation. I guess what confused me was that if this was an image of an engraving, then the paper that it was printed on would not be relevant like it would be if it were an actual historical document. I'm also confused about whether this particular print is of historical importance. Is the original etching still around or is this print all we have left? If the original etching is still around, would a modern re-print be preferable to this restoration of an old print? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 20:47, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's highly unlikely that this old of a woodblock or steel plate would still exist, or, if it did, that Wikipedia would get access to it, and that it hadn't been damaged over time. As for the paper - there's two schools of thought on paper texture and engravings, and I've variously gone with both, but in this case, there's already one without the paper texture. Th old paper can help subtly emphasise age; and engravings can often look better on somewhat warmer colours than the default computer screen white, but it's not, as you say, a major part of the historicness. If I can, I usually try for with paper textre first, though - removingthe texture is a one-way operation. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 22:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

While I'm at it, I'll Support my edit. Hey, why not? =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 17:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support alternative Great job on the restoration. Elucidate ^{(light up)} 17:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support edit. Discussion regarding the restoration has satisfied my curiosity and I support this document. Very interesting. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 22:16, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I made a minor improvement to my version - Carol Spears, who did the initial cleaning work, offered her unadjusted file, so I recleaned the areas I had cleaned, and redid the colour adjustment. I don't think the changes should be visible unless you really know what you're looking for, but it should be slightly better at full resolution now. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 10:33, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support edit. Interesting content and EV. --jjron (talk) 14:11, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Superb EV. Very nice. Fletcher (talk) 15:05, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support Edit per above. Makeemlighter (talk) 05:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Aeronautics2.jpg --Wronkiew (talk) 03:59, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]