Dvd Cover Remake Showroom - Akiba-Online

diomedes · #1 10-03-2008, 12:06 AM

Ok, so this is an area where i will pop up a few results of my recent endeavor. As we know, cedar posts godly quality dvd/isos but unfortunately the corresponding covers provided do not match the quality. They are occasionally as low res as 50kb which is tiny. What that means, is when they are printed out, they look like crap. Print those dvd covers and put em in a dvd case and they look like crap in a case! Mind that the front is usually ok, but the back of each dvd has small pictures that do not enlarge/print well at all. I'd pm cedar and see if he is able to provide better, but i doubt it. besides, we all know he's taciturn, so you' be lucky to get a reply i'm sure.

So i decided to do something about that, with my amazingly humble technical skills. By using mspaint and infranview and sometimes (if you're lucky and the idol is a popular one) high resolution pictures that relate to the dvd i made some dvd covers that actually look good. I also use photozoom to improve the quality somewhat and gimp for some colour shading when necessary.

That said, buy yourself a second hand inkjet printer (preferably a certain kind of Canon brand that takes the 3rd party cheap cartriges that cost a whopping dollar each), a paper cropper and go printing-happy. Make impressive, almost authentic looking dvds.

I am shopping around for strategies in using/learning photoshop for these purposes here so if you think you have any suggestions id love to hear them.

diomedes · #2 10-06-2008, 10:24 PM

Some more i made over the past few days. They are time consuming to make, but methinks getting better.

coolkevin · #3 10-07-2008, 01:30 AM

Good Idea, I never thought of that, for me it is the information that is on cover I cannot read, I hope you do mind I try that myself on a couple of covers.

diomedes · #4 10-07-2008, 01:42 AM

Yup, i totally and completely disregard the japanese writting on it, for me having decent quality images is important. I don't read Japanese, so it doesn't bother me if i even do utterly unorthodox things like flipping the text found in a 90 degree flip as in the China Fukunaga dvd cover. I only use the japanese kanji as decorations in an effort to make it seem more or less convincing. I try my best to keep the kanji on any given cover, since if it was absent it would the end result would look contrived and not resemble what is a standard idol back cover.

Anyway, my efforts in this are by no means the last word, try some yourself, i'd be interested in what skills you have.

coolkevin · #5 10-07-2008, 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diomedes

Anyway, my efforts in this are by no means the last word, try some yourself, i'd be interested in what skills you have.

My skills are nearly zero,

I am hoping I can find a program that allows you to increase the size so it can become readable, I cannot read any Japanese either, but on some covers there is some English translations

coolkevin · #6 10-10-2008, 02:00 AM

My first attempt, I did not get the full result I wanted but it is an approvement

diomedes · #7 10-14-2008, 10:59 AM

Couple more recent ones. I think i did another before the weekend, might dig it up. While looking for the Natsuki Kamata photos that i added to this dvd cover, i couldn't help but notice how charming she is. Quite something *whistles* That cover turned out really nice. If you note the original appearance of the Anna dvd cover, you'll see that i took an extremely freestyle approach to it, not attempting to preserve the original layout.

what did you do to it coolkevin? I suppose you did some filter to harden the edges. Something about it still leaves me cold though. I think one can only do so much with a low resolution photo. It can't be much improved. Though i would be curious what you did to it anyway.

coolkevin · #8 10-16-2008, 12:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by diomedes

what did you do to it coolkevin? I suppose you did some filter to harden the edges. Something about it still leaves me cold though. I think one can only do so much with a low resolution photo. It can't be much improved. Though i would be curious what you did to it anyway.

I increased the size then I tried the sharpen tool, then used an edging tool. I tried it different ways of doing it, like starting to sharpen then resizing but that was the best I could do

diomedes · #9 01-13-2009, 12:14 PM

Still making these, developed methods of improving them and making them faster.

In case anyone finds them of use, here goes...

diomedes · #10 01-13-2009, 12:36 PM

Been on a trico kick, they look nice on a shelf, all lined up, they do.