GingerLIFE Magazine Covers to Frames, Part Two...

...hey y'all!

Well, I've made some progress regarding "touching up" my scanned LIFE covers... here's a (somewhat) brief overview as to how to use Microsoft Paint to surprisingly great effect...

...FIRST, the pics posted a few days back (as the one above) are from the internet somewhere... thus in pristine condition, it appears... well, in REALITY, my editions of the magazines, while not in POOR shape by ANY stretch, still have a few spots here and there to patch up... SO, here's how Hu is accomplishing that task...

FIRST, open up the pic in PAINT - it should be a .jpg file if at all possible... Paint is 'persnickety', if anything, regarding its compatibility with other filetypes (like most all Microsoft programs...) ...here's the 'path' you take to do this, just in case there's anyone out there taking notes:

 As for the work to be undertaken... HERE is a close-up of MY Ginger&Fred LIFE cover, showing a all-too-noticeable 'pock mark' in the background, hovering menacingly over Freddie's noggin...

 Oh-KAY... so, what to do... Paint has a VERY cool feature, which at the end of the day is 'copy-and-paste'... here's how that rolls: FIRST, just pick the 'select' box as shown below:

 This gives you a 'crosshair' cursor (which is more than a bit hard to see when traversing over b/w pics...so squint WELL!)... so just find a 'pristine' area of background which will ultimately be 'copied' over the pock mark... hopefully the rectangle 'selection area' shows up to the right of the pic below:

Once you have this 'box' sized to your liking, you 'copy' it - here's the spot for that:

NOW, you can immediately hit the 'paste' button at the far left - this will place the 'selected box' you copied in the top left corner of the work area (I placed it over Fred below in order to get it to show up...):

NOW, just scoot that puppy over the pock-mark area, and... VOILA!

Adios, pock mark!!!  ...in the spirit of full disclosure, I actually used a lot of 'small' paste boxes over this particular pock mark, due to the fact that the 'shading' varied across the rather large pock mark area... so I 'copied' boxes as close to the area as possible to match shading as close as possible... not PERFECT, but a WHOLE lot better than the original state!

This is just one of the cool aspects of Paint... while there are other 'third-party' programs out there which are most likely better, Paint is pretty decent for 'basic' editing of pics such as this... I'm sure many of y'all can run cirles around my efforts here, but hey, I'm feeling pretty good about the prospects of the intended results here...

WELL - back to work for the Hu-meister... this part may take a few days, as there are four of these, of course... so... until then...

KIG, y'all!!!

Hu
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GingerLIFE Magazine Covers to Frames, Part One...

Well, here's an ongoing GingerProject Hu has cooking...

Ginger appeared on LIFE magazine four times... of course, Hu has all four copies in his extensive collection of Gingerbilia (as I'm sure a lot of y'all have as well)... and it has been a desire for quite awhile to somehow frame each of them for display, but decent frames have heretofore been a bit out of reach, budget-wise... and, of course, a quality copy of the covers would be needed, as the mags need to stay in the GingerLibrary, not hermetically sealed in a wall frame...

HOWEVER, Hu and the Crew were out doing some 'post-Christmas' shopping, and just happened to stumbleupon some pretty dang cool 11x14 frames... for about a third of their normal cost! Four of these frames were purchased, with the thought of actually DOING this project within the year...

SO, with the frames at hand, the thought turned to somehow cranking out a decent copy of each cover, which...well, will ultimately be each picture proper! To this end, I have a few utilities in place; namely, a 'large-scale' scanner-printer, which will scan and print up to 11x17... that's not all that common in 'non-commercial' type 'all-in-ones'... it's an HP 7610 series, BTW... highly recommended by Hu.

 AND, as to what type of paper one should use, a trip to the local Staples yielded 6 sheets of 11x17 'glossy' photo paper... not sure as to the specifics of it, but just know it's better than plain ol' copier paper... so that's done.

AS for ink, anyone who has a printer at home knows the cost of ink is purt near prohibitive when considering printing photos - especially large ones - but I've loaded up all new cartridges, so...we'll see... but the refill cartridges run around 65 clams (four cartridges - black, cyan, yellow, magenta), so this may 'stretch' the project timeline a wee bit...

This sets the table for the project... stay tuned for Part TWO of this glorious experiment, where I will post some actual 'step-by-step' photos showing the progress, most likely the 'editing' proceess for the copies prior to printing...

Until then...

Keep It Gingery, Y'all!!!

Hu
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Ginger's Birth House...

...is being not only bought, but will hopefully be turned into a museum!!!

...anyone who has followed G-ology the last few years know that I always wanted to see something like this done for the 'place where it all started' on 100 West Moore Street in Independence, Missouri!

Now it appears it may happen - here's the link to the website - "The Ginger Rogers Birthplace Project". It is part of the Three Trails Cottages, LLC site, which is a home preservation / restoration company... in other words, the PERFECT situation for this century + old house! At the minimum, they are purchasing the property, restoring it, and will 'retro' the house as close as possible to the turn of the century...20th Century, that is... so that's AWESOME by itself!!!

Of course, any undertaking of this nature requires financial support... that's where we can all assist. Check THIS page out, which is a funding site for the project. Speifically, one may purchase brick pavers which will be part of the site, but engraved with your name or whatever you wish to engrave on them... see the site for details. ...pretty cool they used my Ginger in gold pic which was the Gingerology header for quite sometime... which was colorized by Maria, a Gingerologist from years past...

WELL, this is where we can actually take part in what should be a great GingerProject!!! I'm figuring out what I can do as far as donation goes... hopefully y'all can contribute... heck, if we all can just do a $50 donation, it should go a long way to bringing this project to fruition...

I'm truly planning on getting up to KC this summer, and FOR SURE meeting with these folks to discuss things... I am an engineer, as well as a code official, so maybe I can help out with something... although they appear to have a pretty solid team set up to cover all the angles.

Hope we can make a difference... yeah, there's plenty of needy causes out there, but this one is a pretty special one that is close to me, as well as y'all, I'm sure...

KIG!

Hu
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GingerJewelry...

...or what appears to be a reasonable facsimile thereof...

Our good buds over at Turner Classic Movies are at it again, this time offering jewelry which is inspired by great scenes in classic films... and of course our girl Ginger made the list (although there should be at least a few more 'moments' on here, natch...) with the honkin' diamond that ol' whats-her-name wore in Carefree... guess this was the rock Big Steve jammed on Miss Cooper's fingah signifying their brainwashed and ill-fated nuptials... shown by the screen cap above (it shows up pretty well throughout the 'dance floor' part of 'Change Partners', and, well, I guess in the 'FreddieHypnotic' portion as well (which would be a cool name for a rock group, BTW...)).

...in general, the rock looks pretty cool... ...but just for the record, while I'm not a gemologist by ANY means, something tells me these aren't real diamonds... but you jewelry types out there can peruse the details on the link below and hopefully find it's a sweet deal:
TCM - Ginger Rogers inspired jewelry 

...there are many more offerings from TCM regarding jewelry inspired by actresses... LOTSA Harlow and Bette stuff...  which is fine, but... MORE GINGER!!!

Of course, Hu will most likely not pop on one of these, but if any of y'all out there DO, please feel free to review it here, or at least over in the FaceBook GingerCommunity...

Hope 2016 is 'rock'-ing along QUITE Gingerly for y'all thus far!

Until we meet again...

KIG!

Hu
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2016...

...will be VERY Gingery!

...that is all...

...for NOW, anyway...

KIG!
Hu
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