Mariah Carey – Rainbow
Released: 1999
Label: Columbia Records/Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.
Notes:
Front cover: This still looks really good – amazing considering that the jacket itself barely qualifies as a jacket. It’s pretty thin like all LPs released during this time. Very few artists even had their albums released this way at this point. I’ve had this this pretty shortly after release. When I got this one, it had the left-edge of it chopped off (it was a cut-out so even at the small quantities they were making these, they still didn’t always sell). Here, this was easily fixed as I could just “clone” the white over it.
Gatefold: This was a nightmare. I actually started on this four days before it was released and this gatefold is most of the reason why it took so long to finish. I’m sure you can imagine the issue but if you can’t, the fold went right through the background and ultimately, right through her. I put the work in with a “cloning” tool to make it look as good as I could. Even in the middle of typing this, I went back to the image to try to improve. I’m not likely to ever be totally satisfied. Just know that I got as close to perfect as I possibly could. I’m just going to have to let this one go…LOL!
Back cover: Very easy to deal with. This album has been in a jacket protector for years so thankfully, even though the jacket is thin, it’s survived really well.
Sleeves: These are all in great shape. There were some mild wrinkles in inconvenient places so I replaced all the white at their largest size as not to damage the text. I scanned them all at 1200dpi and they’re larger than they’ll appear when you enlarge them here. If you right-click each one and “open in new tab,” you’ll see them large enough to read all the text.
Labels: All labels are pristine. There are slight variances from label to label as you can see above. I present them here as I see them in front of me. Removing the spindle hole was work on all four of these. Still, they came out very well.