Too much work not to share!

One of my favorite Disneyland mementos are the classic 'Fun Maps' drawn by Sam McKim with exacting details of every nook and cranny of the park. I own two of these: from 1964 and 1974. The 1974 map has been framed and hangs on my wall, while the 1964 map was a more recent purchase, and has yet to be framed. One of my favorite features of these maps is how the park is shown in reality, meaning not only is the Haunted Mansion facade shown, but so is the show building, with each scene labeled. Another great feature of these maps is how they show attractions that never came: such as the 1964 map shows the layout for Liberty Street and Edison Square. Later, the 1974 map shows an idea of what will become Space Mountain.

With the 1964 map not being framed, I decided to scan and restore it to the best of my abilities. This, of course, took much longer that I expected. I ended up scanned the entire map five different times, to make certain the pieces would merge correctly together. Luckily, I was able to use photo-stitching software which did a much better job than Photoshop. Once it was stitched together, I scaled down the image close to life size, and went to work using Gimp to remove some of the creases, even out colors, and make it look new.

I am very pleased with the results, as there are only tiny areas that did not merge perfectly, and there is a area that is a little lighter. Attached is a much scaled down version, as the final draft I have comes in at 42" BY 30", around 12 megs. I'm going to have this printed out somewhere and see how it looks.

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Very cool - nice job on the touch ups!

 

Here is a link to the nearly full-sized (8976 x 5962) version, if anyone wants to really study it. I'm hoping to do one more in the near future, now that I have the technique worked out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyes/2246938418/