May 27, 2007

Original Homepage Banner Restoration Project

This was the first banner that I had created for my homepage. It was created in 1998 and hasn't aged gracefully. In '98 with 56k dial-up being "fast", most all web images were highly compressed to make for faster loading times. My homepage banner was no exception. Weighing in at a mere 16 KB, this banner was actually a little on the large side for a banner. It even filled out my 640 x 480 VGA screen nicely.

I'm attempting to do a "restoration" of this banner. That means I am making it from scratch from images collected on the web. I assumed that finding the original images would be the easy part. HA! I've spent many nights searching various websites and search engines to find these images. Two of them arent exact, but very close. The Mel C image on the far left of the banner isn't quite exact and neither is the Metallica image on the far right of the banner. I would have never guessed hunting down these images would be so difficult. I guess that these images were fairly common back in '98 but have become a little more hard to track down in 2007.

Original Banner (450 x 130)

Restored Banner #1 (900 x 247)

Restored Banner #2 (900 x 260)

Original and Restored Banners Shown at 450 pixels wide

Original Banner 450 x 130 (16KB, 24-bit, 96dpi)


Restored Banner #1 450 x 124 (120KB, 24-bit, 200dpi)

Restored Banner #2 450 x 130 (129KB, 24-bit, 200dpi)

Original (enlarged to show compression*) and Restored Banners Shown at 900 pixels wide

Work In Progress

Restored Banner #1

The aspect ratio is slightly off. The Mel C picture on the far left is not exact. The Metallica picture on the far right is slightly off (you can see Kirk's whole microphone in the original banner, but the picture I found has the mic cut off at the top).

Restored Banner #2

I corrected the aspect ratio. I tried to simulate the Mel C picture on the far left from the original banner. It's not exact but it's closer than restored banner #1. I also trimmed the individual images to be closer to the original banner. For example, the image of Mel C in the striped shirt, the top of her head is slightly cut off in the original banner but not in restored banner #1.

Source Images For Restoration

These images were gathered from various sites on the internet. If you want to have a little fun and a challenge, try to find these images on your own on the web (besides here) in less than two hours. Betcha you can't! The fonts found on the banner are Valhalla and Arial.

Original and Restored Compared

Here's an animation showing both old and restored banners. I must say that I'm impressed. Until I saw this animation I didn't realize how "off" the Metallica image is.

*Original banner was not made at 900 pixels wide. I'd taken the original 450 pixels-wide banner and simply enlarged it to 900 x 260 pixels.

Special Note: The web address that appears on the banner (http://members.tripod.com/~Michael_Melancholic/main) is no longer valid. Sometime in the past nine years Tripod has made underscores an illegal character in their URLs. If you simply replace the underscore with a dash, it's a valid address (http://members.tripod.com/~Michael-Melancholic/main).