High Resolution Carpenters Album Covers

Re: why I scanned and posted it—whatever I think of the album cover is beside the point imho. I scanned it because the scans that do exist out there on the Internet are not descreened/despeckled, or the color is washed out. I actually didn’t do much to any of these besides putting the descreen level to “low” on my scanner, cropping it to be a square, and adjusting the white/gray/black balance on some of these covers.

But I agree with you—I don’t know the story behind this album cover, but the taking a photograph and making it look like a sketch was not really original or anything Karen deserved.

The more I read about how she was treated during and after the years she went solo, the more I feel like she was completely dismissed and disregarded by her peers who she idolized. I won’t ever know the full story, but it’s such a shame to me that, when she was just looking to make art (and make money doing it of course), she wasn’t afforded that opportunity at that time. Just my two cents…
Thank you Cuyler for sharing all the things you share with us!
 
Here is Interpretations:

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The original scan was dusty so I digitally cleaned it up since I don't have access to my flatbed scanner at the moment. I'll consider re-scanning it this weekend, sans dust.

Since this one had high contrast (especially in Karen's coat), I used Karen's coat as a white point and I think Richard's jacket as a black point (being mindful to not clip any colors!) and Photoshop took care of the rest.
 
The 30th and 35th anniversary box sets from Japan used some VERY authentic packaging for the album covers, and even the CD faces themselves matched up pretty well with the old LP labels. Here are a few pictures I took when the 35th set was new.
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Those are beautiful! Are there any differences between the 30th 35th anniversary sets, aside from the addition of the Christmas albums in the 35th?
 
The 30th and 35th anniversary box sets from Japan used some VERY authentic packaging for the album covers, and even the CD faces themselves matched up pretty well with the old LP labels. Here are a few pictures I took when the 35th set was new.
CarpHush.jpgCarpHush2.jpgCarpNowThen.jpg
CarpHoriz.jpg
I received a similar SHM-CD mini-LP pressing of "Horizon" (released in 2016), but unfortunately the face of the CD was very plain, nothing like replicating the record label from 1975.

On the obi, there may be mastering information — on the obi of my SHM-CD mini-LP, it said in Japanese that the CD used the 1998 remaster, and made it a point to emphasize something along the lines of: 1998 remaster, so you are hearing what was on the LP originally released in 1975. The waveform shows there is a little more peak limiting than the 1998 CD, but the sound is clean to me!
 
The earlier images I uploaded actually had some color modification without my knowledge... the scanner performed an algorithm to sweeten the color space. I will be sure to re-upload some scans as a flat digitization, no added saturation.

Caveat for the following images: no images were digitally retouched; colors are un-retouched; I had to downsample to 600 px because any larger would have retained the halftone dot printing and given it a "spotty" or "dotted" look. All of the following images are scans of AM+ CD booklets. Some have physical scuff marks; those were not digitally removed. All booklets, and the scanner glass, were wiped with a dry microfiber cloth before scanning.

Enjoy!

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A little Japanese shade:「1998年リマスター音源(オリジナルLPミックス)」 "1998 remaster source (original LP mix)"
 
Oh no! I forgot to include the West German PolyGram Christmas Portrait (non–special edition) CD.

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Live at the Palladium, because there are so few decent scans out there...

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You can get some here by choosing "Album" in the pulldown menu:

iTunes Artwork Finder by Ben Dodson

When you see the cover you want, you will get a choice of "Standard Resolution" and "High Resolution"
I do a version of this method to access high-resolution album artwork, mostly for other artists! This method works best with digital original artwork (i.e. designed on a computer, exported to PNG using a computer). If you want high-resolution and lossless album artwork, use the above but in the URL, change JPG to PNG at the end. :)
 
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