Using 1996 photos in 2020.

When I bought my first digital camera in 1996, the specs were quite impressive. My Epson PhotoPC could take a picture large enough to fill my entire PC’s VGA-resolution screen – 640×480! Of course, on dial-up modems, you would never put pictures of that size on a website, so I often used the half-size 320×240 images online (or smaller).

But today, icons for phone apps are larger than 640×480. My huge 1996 pictures now look like postage stamps.

But technology always finds a way, and I am experimenting with some modern image processing that uses artificial intelligence to try to figure out what was supposed to be in the photo, and make it larger.

Here is an example… This is a 1996 photo from Disneyland:

1996 Disneyland Frontierland (original).

And here is the same photo, reprocessed to be double the resolution:

6401996 Disneyland Frontierland (reprocessed).

If you viewed the original at double size and compared it with the reprocessed photo, you could see quite a difference. But in small sizes in this article, it just looks a tad sharper. Zooming in on the people in the canoe shows there wasn’t enough detail for the AI to do much. It gives them a weird artistic filtered look.

Let’s see if we can show them side-by-side. You can click on these to see them full size.

The question I have for you today is … should I reprocess the photos I share in these articles? Or just use the original 1996 versions as-is?

Comments are appreciated.

Frontierland in 1996.

Howdy, folks! In a previous article I mentioned thinking the photos of Fantasyland I took in 1996 looked pretty much like ones I would take in 2018. Now that I get to my Frontierland photos, I think the same can be said about them, too. For instance, new teepees had been recently added to the entrance:

Teepees at the Frontierland entrance on August 14, 1996.

And over on the shore of Tom Sawyer Island, Cascade Peak was pouring water down beside the long-abandoned tracks of Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland. (Be sure to visit that link above for a great article about this on Yesterland.)

Cascade Peak on August 18, 1996.
More fall fun on August 18, 1996.

And the Keel Boats (look in the top left of this next photo) were still taking guests around the River’s of America:

Keel Boat, Mark Twain (in refurb) and Canoe on August 18, 1996.
Keel Boat on August 18, 1996. One of the photos I took of them was used (without permission, for what it’s worth) for an e-Bay auction when they sold the vehicle off… Though my photo was of a different keel boat than the one they were selling. Still counts. I’ve been “published” by Disney! 🙂
Inside a keel boat on August 18, 1996.

Remember how they’d tell everyone to not stand at the same time, else the boat would “keel over”? That was a joke, wasn’t it?

And over on Tom Sawyer Island, you could still climb up some very high rock formations to look around. I took this photo from up top of one, and I recall being stunned they let guests climb that high. There weren’t any guard rails or anything, yet I didn’t see guests falling down left and right and hurting themselves. They still had the “playground” equipment (like teeter totter rock and such) still in operation back then, too…

As you can see, things in the old west really don’t change that much.

Until next time…