Label Advice Needed

[ThomasRau]

I have a family heirloom, a sign from my Great-Grandfathers brewery that I was thinking of using as the basis for designing my labels. Here is a somewhat poor quality pic of the sign, the glass reflects a bit but it is way too fragile to remove from the frame. It is hand painted with the "canvas" being a used barley sack.

The problem I have run into is finding the images to make up the "crest", I have found a typeface that is close enough. I was starting to think perhaps the easiest solution is to just get a good quality picture and use that rather than trying to recreate it.

Any thoughts?

 

[DeathBrewer]

picture could work. i would just trace it in illustrator, myself.

 

[Rick91981]

Spending a few mins cleaning it up that pic can work out fine. Even still has that old authentic look to it.

 

[ThomasRau]

Great idea on cleaning up the pic, thanks!

 

[Rick91981]

Happy to help out

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Here's a quick edit using the Gimp. First, I increased the contrast a TON, then I increased the brightness until the background turned predominantly white. I selected everything relatively light colored, filled the selection with white, then inverted the selection and filled with black. Turned out ok. With a little refinement, it could be very usable.

 

[onecolumbyte]

I'd try tracing in a vector graphics program. I think you'd be able to get an amazing crest. I've been using Inkscape (@ Inkscape.org). Its opensource (free) and does what Adobe Illistrator does. Look for a couple tutorials on tracing, but basically you import the pic as a background and use the pen tool to trace it. Then strip out the background. Once you have it traced you can do amazing things with shading and colors.

Here's a quick workup using Inkscape (about 20 mins)