I had an uncharacteristically brilliant idea for repairing/replacing
the leader on a tattered Ampico roll.  I scanned an Ampico roll with
a clean leader on my 11"x17" flat-bed copier/printer/scanner/fax
machine in JPG format.

I opened the file in PhotoShop (I have PhotoShop Elements 2.0, often
bundled with digital cameras) and copied patches of the beige field
onto the title and tempo areas of the leader to cover the unwanted text
and then 'merged the layers down'.  This gave me a blank leader with
the Ampico picture frame intact.

Since the 11x17 scan is not the right size for the 11-1/4" wide roll,
I cropped the image to width and extended the 'canvas' for additional
length.  The scanned leader will likely not be perfectly square with
the scan 'paper'.  I spent some time rotating the image until it was
closer to square.  I will go back into the file and copy beige
patches/splotches to extend the color longer and wider, above the
'frame' and wider than the scan image's 11 1/4".  I used
randomly-shaped splotches of color to copy so that any small mismatch
of color would be less obvious.

I opened a new Microsoft Word file and practiced making sample bits of
text and changing the fonts to resemble the Ampico fonts.  This is far
easier to do in Word than in PhotoShop because the sample text font
changes as you run your cursor over the choices.  I went back to the
PhotoShop file and typed in the first piece of appropriate text in the
font (PhotoShop has all the same fonts) that I'd identified in Word.
I then went to text color' and fiddled with the hue and brightness
until I got a close match for the dark green color that Ampico used.
Each succeeding block/line of text arrives in the chosen color and ends
up on its own layer in PhotoShop, and I was careful to not 'merge' them
down.

This file can be 'saved as', in PhotoShop's PSD file format, to preserve
the particular roll leader and each text block can be modified for the
next roll.  I printed the file on 11x17" paper, fitted it to the roll
and taped it both sides with document repair tape.  Of course, the
paper is ordinary copy paper and will not last nearly as long as the
roll already has.

I'm happy to share my file and would hope that if anybody has a better
idea/file, they'd share it with me.  I think you'd need PhotoShop to
open/use the PSD file, and a 11x14" or 11x17" capacity copier.

Douglas S. Heckrotte
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
dheckrotte@gmail.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]