Image Restoration/Pencil sketch lithograph
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This pencil sketch lithograph is a political cartoon from the mid-nineteenth century. It depicts Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson repairing the rift that had caused the American Civil War. Published in 1865, a century and a half of aging has yellowed and faded the paper. Although generally well preserved, a few stains, smudges, and other marks distract from the central subject.
For encyclopedic restoration, the goal here is to remove distracting effects so that the viewer's attention is drawn to the style and content of the sketch itself. The restoration was completed in approximately 3 hours.
[edit] The original image
Selecting a suitable image is the most important decision in any restoration. This file was reasonably high resolution (12mb in the original Library of Congress version), well composed, and fairly well drawn.
Other political cartoons of the United States from the mid-nineteenth century often look cluttered and obscure to twenty-first century eyes. Artists often relied on complex allegories and large dialog bubbles. This one had the advantage of two elements well known to modern readers: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. The metaphor of sewing for mending the union is well illustrated and easy to understand. So although this is not a particularly famous cartoon, it covers an important subject and is a reasonably good example of a particular cartooning style.
On a technical level, the file doesn't have inherent problems such as .jpg artifacting or scanner streaks and is in adequate focus. The lithograph itself has been well preserved for an item of its age.
[edit] First edit
Sometimes cropping is the second most important decision after image selection. When the main purpose is display on a web page at just a few hundred pixels, are there low informational value elements that could be cropped away? The border could be important if the image were intended for a discussion of nineteenth century lithography, but I had in mind the biography of Andrew Johnson. So most of the original border isn't needed.
Before cropping, rotate the image so it comes out evenly if possible. I generally do rotations down to tenths of a degree. Occasionally the result cannot come out quite right because the image itself is distorted. Here, the hand drawn top and bottom border lines are not perfectly parallel, and the bottom caption text was not quite parallel with either. When this happens, double check to verify the difference and choose one line as a guide point Here I selected the top border.
