Record Company 45rpm & 12-inch Sleeves

These are actual record company sleeves as used for 45rpm and 12-inch singles.  They cover a wide time period from the 1950’s up until the 2000’s.  All of them needed work, some really extensive.  The rule is the older the sleeve, the more work went into restoring it for inclusion.  I chose to make these look relatively new rather than leaving them looking the least bit aged.  To that end, color was completely replaced on the older sleeves.  When one replaces color, sometimes text suffers.  In the instances where the text suffered too much, I replaced it with the closest font I could find.

The “remove color cast” filter was also used when needed.  This comes in very handy when one is confronted with pictures that have prematurely yellowed.  It quickly reduces the yellowing and restores the photo to it’s original color.  The old Motown sleeves benefitted tremendously from this method.  

The center hole was removed from the sleeves when possible.  I’d always rather use this method and worked very hard on some of these to make that happen.  When that wasn’t possible, when the sleeve looked better with the 45rpm label there, or when my fix looked inauthentic, I used a record label to cover it. 

While the “vinyl resurgence” has brought back many old LPs we loved, these great sleeve designs will likely never be back in circulation.