Where do you Find your Images?
What we offer is a mix of scans from our own collections of images scanned from Antique Books, Postcards, Ephemera etc, and images that come from very carefully vetted sources, as well as some newly created pictures. We purchase a lot from Europe, and of course the U.S. as well. Occasionally we do haul videos on YouTube, showing some of our finds, be sure and check them out, if you are interested.
All images that we offer go through an assessment and improvement process. They are cleaned up (sometimes a lot!) and altered as needed. We may change the color, remove stains, repair rips or damage, remove portions of an image, change the size, sharpen, and in some cases drastically alter the image to fit our theme, or just make it generally more usable. We then painstakingly remove the background areas, so that you have a transparent image to work with, and the work is already done for you. This entire process takes hours and hours of work!
Here are a few photos of our archives, where we keep our Ephemera. Each of the books in the photos are loaded with illustrations, as well as all of the file drawers and multiple large postcard binders. They are all chock full of inventory!
A Peek Into Our Archives
You can find info about us and our team HERE.
Artist Created Pictures (Hand Drawn & Painted Art)
We have a number of bundles from years past that include newly created pictures that were hand drawn, or hand painted, by artists friends of ours. You can still find these bundles on the site but you have to go back a bit to see them. This was one way that we could bring some interesting pictures on various topics that we were not able to find, or never existed, in the past. We stopped doing these a few years ago as we found out, via member surveys, that these were not particularly popular with most of our members. Many felt that they did not have the vintage appeal that they were looking for.
Image Editing & AI (Enhanced Vintage with AI)
We recognize that the use of the term AI in relation to art has become controversial. Many image-editing programs that have been our standard tools for decades now incorporate AI-assisted features directly into their editing workflows.
Each day, we restore antique scans and historical images that may have tears, missing areas, discoloration, water stains, or other quality or age-related damage. Before these works can be offered to you, they are carefully corrected using professional editing software, like Photoshop, to remove excessive damage while preserving the original character and integrity of the antique document.
We believe in full transparency. Any image that has been scanned in or edited using modern software, even if the restoration work is performed manually by a human, may technically involve AI-assisted processes, and could therefore carry an invisible digital watermark embedded at the metadata level.
Machine Generated Pictures (Vintage Style AI)
While the vast majority of our images are vintage (currently over 9,000), we have started offering some machine generated pictures (AI) in some of our bundles. We pay for the pro version of the tool that we use, which allows commercial use. We are using this tool in a responsible manner. We never use any artists names that are currently living. The artist's names that we use in our prompts are of those whose work is already in the Public Domain. Also most of the time we use dates from around the 1700's to early 1900's. We are excited about the possibility of being able to offer unique images to our members in various themes that we would not be able to otherwise offer. This includes beautiful illustrations of more diverse people which are extremely difficult to find in resources produced prior to 1931 (the time period that falls into the public domain). These types of images have been repeatedly requested by our members and we are so pleased that now we can finally offer some. The response to these new types of pictures has been quite positive overall.
Keep in mind that for the machine generated pictures, you may not be able to get a copyright license from the U.S. government for projects, using these images, that you would want to publish. So for example if you are writing a novel that you want to publish, it would be best not to use these pictures to illustrate your book.
We have set up a way for you to find these images, if you would prefer not to use them in your projects. You can simply filter them out on the image page, using the styles filter in the sidebar and by selecting "Authentic Vintage".
Here is how to find these different types of images on the site:
Step 1: Click on "Images" at the top of the site.
Step 2: Along the left sidebar, scroll down until you see the "Styles" filter. Click on the "See More" at the end of the category options to populate the entire drop down.
Select either "Authentic Vintage" to only see only all of our original Vintage/Antique Images.
Or you can select "Enhanced Vintage w/ AI" for antique images edited with tools that may use AI.
Or you can select "Vintage Style AI". To populate only the machine generated images on the site. (Make sure you Don't check multiple boxes at the same time)
