Hello all,  Recently I have been working on a solution to the problem
of replacing damaged or missing Duo-Art labels and believe I have a
technique which is practical with modern home computer systems.

I have now upgraded my system to a Pentium II and added a colour inkjet
printer and scanner, both of which are amazingly cheap (even with the
lousy Aussie dollar!).  The scanner is 1200 dots per inch and cost about
US$120, and the printer (Canon BJC-4300) about US$170.

I scanned in the best of my good labels of various sizes and then used
"Paintshop Pro" to edit out the printed titles by overlaying suitable
areas of background colours.  There are other similar image processing
packages around but make sure you have plenty of RAM or they will be
painfully slow.

Once I have suitable masters, I try a few print runs to get the shades
and density of the colours as close as possible and then I can add the
text in whatever colour and font is closest to the originals.  It is
particularly good for replacing the faded red Duo-Art printing, even to
the extent of retaining some faded look so they don't appear too new!
I also keep most of the old printing flaws for originality.  I only
replace (cover over) the worst label on 2 ended boxes so that an
original label is still visible.

A simpler and quicker technique is to convert the image to black and
white, correcting image flaws as desired, adding text and then printing
in black on a suitable coloured paper.  This technique is generally
used by roll recutters but the results can be disappointing and not
really good enough for fixing up old originals.  One advantage of this
method is that the files are smaller and more suitable for e-mailing,
and a more basic printer can be used.

As yet, I haven't finished making up a set of masters but it should be
possible to make available black and white images for others to use.
MMD member Peter Coggins also uses some e-mailable scans for roll
labels and of course the techniques can be used for most types of roll
labels, particularly easy where the roll leader has the box label glued
on.

Cheers,

Darrell Clarke