First is a pic taken from the original from 1985, the second pic is the up-to-date vinyl edition. More than that all the pictures are not clear like in the originals but terribly blurry, the fonds and writings - like lyrics and credits - are also not sharp but totally washy, uncontrasted and blurry. But the worst thing is really the cut off.
Let us investigate further.
Let's look at the entire sleeve. For those without a Live After Death vinyl handy ... first, shame on you ... second, we're talking about the disc 2 inner sleeve. Which is lucky for me, because my disc 1 sleeve got lost back in the 90s.
Old sleeve (purchased January 1986) on top, new sleeve (unsealed about 3 weeks ago) on bottom.
The new sleeve is just slightly wider, about 2mm. One could argue, they should have simply reprinted the original size image with a 1mm black border around it. Instead, they filled the extra space by enlarging the entire image. That's why all the edges are cropped. But they actually enlarged it intelligently: they actually
reduced the blue borders between images by about a half millimeter. Every picture on the sleeve is individually enlarged a tiny bit.
Here's the vertical view, the left edges of the same sleeves. 1986 on the left, 2022 on the right. You can see it's stretched away from the center in the same way.
And now we know why the new version is slightly blurry: image software doing image enlargement. Unless you're processing from the original negative (or by other analog methods), there's no way a computer can enlarge any image just a slight amount without losing definition.
So, maybe we give them a pass on this one. They tried to give us bigger pictures. They meant well, right? Besides, we're only talking about inner sleeves here.
<To be read in the tone of "we talkin' 'bout practice".> Not the cover. Not the cover. We talkin' 'bout
inner sleeves, right?
Again, it's 1986 on the left and 2022 on the right. At first, I thought the difference was simply the old one fading due to age. But nope, the new version is recolored. Blues are deeper, yellows bolder. But in the process, they
destroyed image clarity. Check out how much sharper the text on the tombstone is in the old version. That ain't my camera screwin' around, that's real. Just look what did to "me": (old then new)
The new version looked like it got smashed flat as a pancake somewhere along the line. Derek Riggs must be rolling in his grave.
No pictures for this one... on the old version, the trees on the left side of the back cover have a hint of green in their color. It made the scene feel more real, less comic-book. The new coloring took that out: everything is now a shade of blue, or yellow. It feels monochrome now, a substitute for black and white. The subtlety of Rigg's original color choices was entirely lost.
However: none of this (except maybe the lack of color on the cover) is immediately noticed if you're just holding the new one in hand. It's still
Live After Death, the beast whose numbers make you say "doctor, Long Beach fucked up my hearing for good".
