I was searching the web for a good box art graphic to use for the Atari 2600 system page on vizzed but I couldn't find any. Most of the boxes were of pictures from a bad angel, crappy looking boxes, poor photos, etc. So I instead decided to take the best picture I could find of the Atari 2600 box and restore it.


Before


After



Here's everything I did in Photoshop to pull that off.

I first removed the gray background and completely recreated it. Then I cut out each element from the photo to work on individually. Each element I used various effects to help make sure that they blended in with the background. The logo I actually completely replaced with a logo I found on the internet. The rainbow colors below the logo I basically recreated and the red bar below that I mostly recreated to (except for the font itself).

The toughest challenge was the Atari 2600 graphic itself. The first thing I had to do was transform it so that it was a perfect rectangle (before it was all unproportioned due to the angle of the picture)). The right side of the box had some damage and also had a glare. What I decided to do was copy the left side, flip it and then gradually merge it on top of the image and that worked out almost perfectly.

Lastly I messed with the levels and made sure everything blended in together. It's not perfect and I could've made it more perfect but I really didn't want to invest more than 2 hours into this.

This isn't the first time I've restored images. I've restored various black and white photos for my grandma before (and actually colorized them) and I've also restored other various gaming items. Here's an example of another gaming item I've restored
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=48769

I don't know much about Photoshop, but this is some really impressive work. I've always wanted to own an Atari 2600, honestly.

Wow, I'm amazed with what people can do with PhotoShop, from the simplist of things to the most complex. It looks great, like a great HD boost.

Juliaisme123 : The Atari 2600 games didn't age well but for those who can appreciate and/or overlook the graphics can usually find some entertainment in some of the games. I myself own a 2600 and a 7800. I don't own a box for either but if I did, I definitely would've tried scanning my own.

zanderlex : Yeah Photoshop is a very powerful program and with enough time, you can do almost anything. If I hadn't been so short on time, I definitely could've done even more with it. The link I provided to my Tecmo Super Bowl restoration was definitely more of an HD boost though. You can see an example of it here:



https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=48769

That is good box art. It is almost like my mind went back in time and wanted to play that. I do agree with David,time was not kind to the Atari and it was responsible for the great video game crash. It took a lot of imagination,but there are some cool titles out there. I just looked at it again,where is the faux-wood grain veneer with it?

Oldschool777 : This was for the model that didn't have it. The box I used was actually the box for the European version.

Too bad,I liked the US box better. But thanks for the clarification. But then again,I may be biased,I liked the faux wood grain on stuff when it was around in cars and such.

Oldschool777 : The reason I went with the European box is because the Atari 2600 logo is much bigger on it and is far more readable when it's viewed as an icon as seen on this page (which I recently updated to show top game systems):
https://www.vizzed.com/playonlinegames/

This is the box of the US version and as you can see, not much emphasis is placed on the logo and it doesn't even actually say Atari 2600:
http://www.playerschoicevideogames.com/misc_images/atari2600ad.gif

It may not say Atari 2600,but we all knew it. The road down the digital playground for older gamers like myself.

Oldschool777 : That's true that us older gamers know what it is by the system itself but the younger generation may not know what an Atari 2600 even looks like.

Davideo7 : Nice work, I see what you mean by poor images after doing a Google image search lol.  Photoshop is an amazing program, I use it quite a bit when I'm modding Counter-Strike.  Mostly creating raw textures from scratch and modifying some *cough* obtained *cough* textures.  

I know,that is sad,that was the genesis of a system that could play different games. And it was easy to set up. Of course you need an old school TV today to use it.

The Tecmo Super Bowl box looks great... unfortunately, for me your layout puts a break in it. ^^;

gtwalq : I do remember you having awesome Photoshop skills based on the graphics I've seen you put together in the past.

Vanelan : Weird, it doesn't do that for me. Which browser are you using? Here are the URL of those images so you can see them by themselves:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/upload/files/TecmoSuperBowlRestorationFrontFull.jpg
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/upload/files/TecmoSuperBowlRestorationBackFull.jpg

Davideo7 : I'm using Chrome and running, for all intents and purposes, 1920x1080 resolution.

Davideo7 : I take my hat off to you, I had a little crack at restoring the original because I thought it might be fun.  Instead of restoring it I unintentionally started remaking it into this lol

gtwalq : How did you go about making that controller and system?

Davideo7 : Just a few blended layers and I made a preset pattern for the console grill.  Once I was happy with the layers I merged them and blended what I needed with smudge, dodge and burn.  

gtwalq : Really? It looks fantastic. It definitely looks like someone recreated that from the ground up. Is there a name for this process?

Davideo7 : thanks, i might finish it off tonight.  Not sure of a name for the process, I call it the "kids are finally asleep, what do i do now" process.

EDIT:

Spent another 20 minutes on it when I got home from work, not sure if I can do any more to it.  




A bit more on the process now that I have a keyboard and not typing on my phone;  

I basically clipped around each face of an object, applied a solid colour brush which was close to the colour I wanted.  I duplicated that clipped area and turned it into a layer which allowed me to use the blending options on it.  Usually bevel, inner/outer shadow, gradient.  Once I did this to all/most of the faces of an object, I merged them together so I could work on the edges and blend them (I used smudge, dodge and burn mostly).  After that I used image adjustments like hue/saturation etc.  

I've never read any tutorials or books on photoshop, its just something I've experimented with over the years; so I'm not sure if the process is a good one or not, it just seems to work.