Is it just my eyes or is this curator pedigree a little underwhelming? 1 1

[90sChild]

Is it just my eyes or is this curator pedigree a little underwhelming?

So I've been looking to find the perfect cgc 9.4 Strange #169 to go into my attempt at the entire 9.4 run.  I saw a curator copy pop up in the newest comiclink auctions.  I thought well perfect this is probably the best one to have.  I've seen some flawless looking curator books in the past so I thought it was strange when I made a closer look at the colors.  Below is the curator copy and compared with a random 7.0 book also ending that day.  Seems to me like the 7.0 has a far superior colors?  Perhaps these are just bad scans?  I was ready to eat the four figures for this book but now I'm changing my mind.  I'm not trying to dog curator pedigrees, just curious to know more here.

Edited May 26, 2017 by 90sChild
url for image changed

[VintageComics]

Those scans were made with different scanners. Just look at the blues on the two labels. They are different.

The Curator pedigree is arguably one of the nicest preserved SA Pedigrees of all time. The books were meticulously stored by a museum curator in the museum he worked in.

If the colors look stronger on the 7.0 it's either because the scanner is sharper or in production the color strike just happened to be better for the 7.0 copy over all.

There is no way I'd ever use the words 'underwhelming' and 'curator' in the same sentence.

 

Edited April 24, 2017 by VintageComics

[90sChild]

While I agree that everything you just said is true, what would cause the glaring difference?  Even if the color temperature was adjusted for the original picture, I'm not sure it would make them equal.  
I opened it up in photoshop and removed some of the red and green to give it more of a blue color temperature.  It looks better but there's no way of knowing for sure if that is how the book would look in hand.
 

 

[comicquant]

16 minutes ago, 90sChild said:

While I agree that everything you just said is true, what would cause the glaring difference?  Even if the color temperature was adjusted for the original picture, I'm not sure it would make them equal.  
I opened it up in photoshop and removed some of the red and green to give it more of a blue color temperature.  It looks better but there's no way of knowing for sure if that is how the book would look in hand.
 

 

Its called cross-hatching and is a programmatic artifact from scanning printed materials.  It essentially dilutes color saturation, among other things.  Cross-hatching can be especially noticeable on large, low quality scans such as this one.  When these auction houses have to scan thousands of books they can save 60 seconds per book by lowering the scan quality.  This is one reason why I don't scan my "scans" but take pictures with a camera.  Heritage actually photographs their books probably for this very reason (https://comics.ha.com/itm/silver-age-1956-1969-/doctor-strange-169-marvel-1968-cgc-nm-mt-98-white-pages/a/7141-91253.s?ic4=OtherResults-SampleItem-Thumbnail-022817).  

No matter what you do to touch up the photo it won't work because its using interpolation which is an educated guess as to what the color of a neighboring pixel or group of pixels should be.  Any touch-up is only as good as the original.  To Roy's point, if you hold the Curator copy in your hand you'd probably be blown away by the colors.  Just look at the difference in page color from the sliver of page sticking out of each book.  The Curator copy pages look extremely bright white compared to the OW/WH of the 7.0.  You can only assume this level of preservation also applies to the cover.    

[VintageComics]

1 hour ago, 90sChild said:

While I agree that everything you just said is true, what would cause the glaring difference?  Even if the color temperature was adjusted for the original picture, I'm not sure it would make them equal.  
I opened it up in photoshop and removed some of the red and green to give it more of a blue color temperature.  It looks better but there's no way of knowing for sure if that is how the book would look in hand.

Scanners convert a picture into a code of 1s and 0s.

Then it converts it back to a picture from 1s and 0s.

Think of converting a paragraph from English to another language and then having a 2nd translator convert the paragraph back to English  no real references from the 1st source material.

You'd have differences between the 1st English paragraph and the 2nd. You'll never end up with exactly the same paragraph.

Touching up the picture with photoshop scrambles the image even more.

the best you can do is try to get the image as close to the original as possible but it will never be exactly like holding the book in hand.

[Aman619]

Say what? Yes digital means at its essence ones and zeroes, but that's true but meaningless since in a similar vein, everything is made up of electrons and protons. And yet mass is far more complicated than two type of basic building blocks. Just as electrons and protons combine in atoms to form elements so too in scanning and printing where your ones and zeroes are actually smaller bits that Read in 256 bit combinations per pixel... and using 256 ones and zeros allows for millions of colors. (256 x 256 possible combinations times each color R G and B )  of course, after the scan data is stored, it then gets translated back to our eyes on everybody's monitors, and they are ALL different from one another based on their manufactures, pixel depth, age etc etc.  

If if anyone wants to compare pedigrees based on scanned images, good luck. But it's a waste of time Because you are just comparing scans, on YOUR screen, and not the books themselves side by side in the same lighting...

[Jeffro.]

I wouldn't say the 7.0 has "far superior colors". Just not seeing that. Yes, the colors do look better than the Curator but as stated above, it could be the scanner.

I sure wouldn't let that stop me if I wanted the comic. 

Edited April 26, 2017 by Jerkfro
typo

[entalmighty1]

This is the only Curator I've owned, and I can tell you the scans don't do the book justice.  Unrelated, I've found that sometimes (not always), posting books on auction sites that you plan on going after isn't always in your best interest, as you're just giving the auction house free advertising.  I'd love to upgrade my 9.2 to this Curator copy.  

[90sChild]

While I was certainly aware posting it would probably bring this book to the attention of far more buyers, I was more concerned about buying something that I felt had some unsolved questions and wouldn't want to end up with an overpriced book I wasn't happy with.  

[the blob]

the curator looks much nicer.  as for the depth of colors..cgc doesn't care much

[crassus]

1 minute ago, the blob said:

the curator looks much nicer.  as for the depth of colors..cgc doesn't care much

+1 on this, imo for CGC to adopt a system (any system I guess) that offers objective consistency, several features of a raw book, including vibrancy of colour, would have to be discarded as impossible to measure- gloss, or reflectivity and colour are subjective. Creases, stains, folds etc are objective and either exist or do not exist. For me this has always been the essence of the dichotomy between technical grade (the number on the slab) and eye appeal, which is only knowable raw and in certain light. A scanner almost always makes a book look worse than it is. The book looks lovely to me, presently in the slab, I'm sure it will look even better raw, if you can afford to crack it out.

[VintageComics]

19 hours ago, Aman619 said:

Say what? Yes digital means at its essence ones and zeroes, but that's true but meaningless since in a similar vein, everything is made up of electrons and protons. And yet mass is far more complicated than two type of basic building blocks. Just as electrons and protons combine in atoms to form elements so too in scanning and printing where your ones and zeroes are actually smaller bits that Read in 256 bit combinations per pixel... and using 256 ones and zeros allows for millions of colors. (256 x 256 possible combinations times each color R G and B )  of course, after the scan data is stored, it then gets translated back to our eyes on everybody's monitors, and they are ALL different from one another based on their manufactures, pixel depth, age etc etc.  

You know the saying that analog sounds better / different than digital?

Same sort of thing here.

The code is trying to imitate the image but it's never an exact representation. It's just doing it as close as possible, and usually close enough so that a casual glance wouldn't notice any differences but upon scrutiny (like in the comparison in the 1st post) you start to notice the differences between scans.

That's why you get ghost defects in scans - spine stresses that aren't really there, dust shadows looking darker than they actually are, etc.

I've seen scans where a book looks tanned but isn't when held inhand.

Also, I find that you get what you pay for and more expensive scanners take better scans than cheaper ones. but some scanners are just not made for slabs no matter what you do.

 

[VintageComics]

4 hours ago, crassus said:

several features of a raw book, including vibrancy of colour, would have to be discarded as impossible to measure- gloss, or reflectivity and colour are subjective.

It would also vary within a print run so greatly it would be nearly impossible to quantify and scale so they just went for ignoring it unless of course there is an extreme.

For example a faded cover will get dinged and an especially vibrant one could possibly be a deciding factor in the grade if they are on the fence (that's just my opinion and not based on any facts)

[Guardian Comics]

On 2017-04-24 at 9:29 AM, Jerkfro said:

I wouldn't say the 7.0 has "far superior colors". Just not seeing that. Yes, the colors do look better than the Curator but as stated above, it could be the scanner.

I sure wouldn't let that stop me if I wanted to comic. 

I'm not seeing it either.  The Curator is smoking hot, and I bet mind blowing in hand.

 

Jim

[Artboy99]

8 hours ago, Guardian Comics said:

I'm not seeing it either.  The Curator is smoking hot, and I bet mind blowing in hand.

 

Jim

Agreed.

I cant see any difference in the color intensity on my monitor. They are identical. In fact I took each image and imported them into a program I have and captured pixels from the exact same spots in the images and I get the exact same RBG codes.

The Curator copy looks fantastic in my opinion.

[Rip]

3 hours ago, Artboy99 said:

Agreed.

I cant see any difference in the color intensity on my monitor. They are identical. In fact I took each image and imported them into a program I have and captured pixels from the exact same spots in the images and I get the exact same RBG codes.

The Curator copy looks fantastic in my opinion.

Curators tend to be the best preserved pedigree in the silver age. I would go for it.

[90sChild]

For anyone interested, it sold for $1600.  I didn't bid.  Any non-pedigree would be selling in the $1200 range so I guess the curator was worth a 33% boost.  If anyone here bought it I would be curious to see how it looks with a camera in normal outdoor lighting.  Comiclink was very helpful in rescanning the image for the auction although I have to admit it ended up looking identical to the first one  posted.
 

[Artboy99]

I highly recommend you buy a copy that you can see in hand rather than from an internet scan so you can ensure it meets your expectations.

[VintageComics]

13 hours ago, 90sChild said:

Comiclink was very helpful in rescanning the image for the auction although I have to admit it ended up looking identical to the first one  posted.

Scanners will never represent a comic as accurately as holding it in your hand.

And even within a pedigree, the OO is a slave to whatever was on the newsstand at the time. If he couldn't find a superior copy and was forced to buy an inferior one then that's what you get for that particular issue.

You can trust that the Curator pedigree is top 2 when considered for greatness in the Silver Age and possibly even 1st.

[entalmighty1]

4 hours ago, VintageComics said:

Scanners will never represent a comic as accurately as holding it in your hand.

And even within a pedigree, the OO is a slave to whatever was on the newsstand at the time. If he couldn't find a superior copy and was forced to buy an inferior one then that's what you get for that particular issue.

You can trust that the Curator pedigree is top 2 when considered for greatness in the Silver Age and possibly even 1st.

What would you consider to be the other top ped from the SA?  Don/Maggie?