Using Photoshop (or the like)

[gameswat]

Am I right in thinking the background was originally mirrored? If so then I guess you could've used a thin piece of polished alloy sheet or plastic mirror etc. behind the glass to replicate this; though problematic if you want light to shine through in various places.

As for the need to paint the background white behind the decals, I prefer to use the water decal paper that comes in white or clear. It has a perfect opacity for replicating silk screened graphics like pinball plastics etc. that need to be backlit but also makes the graphics colour pop when printed.

[tazmantic]

Well, downloaded a trial of Paint Shop to give it a go and scanned an old award card to see how I get on. I must admit the software is rather good and though it's a very slow process I am making a tatty award card look better, so tonight I thought I'd try and scan my very sad looking front glass off my Princess to see if I could do anything with it, but every time I scan it the image comes out blurred. Is it because the image is behind 6mm of glass?

[widget2k4]

Try taking a good high quality photo of it and use that. That's what I do with stuff that won't fit in the scanner.

[pennymachines]

Aha - widget got there first, but I was going to suggest the same:
Yes, the image surface needs to be closer to the glass. Some scanners let you adjust the focal point in advanced driver settings etc., otherwise your best bet might be to use a digital camera in macro mode. You need even lighting and a tripod or such to keep the camera rock steady. Then you can correct lens distortions in the photo editing software.

[tazmantic]

Cheers guys Ill give it a go, so I take it if you want to do a full front glass you need to do it in bits.....

[chris rideout]

Very nice job. Exactly how I do it too. Worth taking the time I think as those old graphics and lettering were usually hand drawn or at least hand set, so the fonts are often all over the place. I can spot reproduced computer set lettering a mile away as too perfect and never quite the same style - just looks wrong to me and ruins the whole machine!

I had some fun with fonts when I realised there was no exact font for the Jennings TIC TAC TOE or the Sega BAR. I had to make my own by scanning the original and finding the nearest match out of nearly 900 fonts on my PC. After I had done that, I added serifs and made other adjustments such as letter spacing, etc until I had a "forgery" of the original. I did this with all the symbols using Corel Draw X4. The orange was easy. The cherry took several days. The melon had to have all the pips in the right places. Several symbols have light and shade effects on them; that added more work for me but I did it eventually. Unfortunately, I can't show you the evidence because a Corel Draw image won't paste into the window. The extension ".cdr" is not recognised.

[pennymachines]

Hi Chris - it seems a shame not to share the fruits of all that labour. If you email the file to , I'll convert it and put it in Resources.
Alternatively, you can convert a .CDR to .JPG online here.