A couple of Joe's links to things he couldn't read, that were implied to have been at 72 dpi 'way back then, now download as 300 dpi. Depending on your printer, 150 dpi should be good enough to print as close as you'll get to an "original quality" copy, but 300 dpi is good with better printers - which now are much more common. The 300 dpi level makes it a lot easier to make useful "improvements" to the images.

It's apparent that they've kept their promise to upgrade the resolution as the web has picked up speed.

Gargoyle doesn't mention whether "sharpening is easy" applies to the older versions, but I agree that Photoshop is the right tool. Photoshop Elements includes everything you need for manipulating existing images, but omits the Photoshop tools for creating artwork. Elements (PSE) is still fairly reasonably priced if you're serious about working picturesl but it's no longer quite as "reasonable" as when they were introducing the program, when with rebates you could get it for $40(US). I haven't looked recently, but it's probably still less than $200(?) from discounters.

For the couple of images that Joe linked as examples - probably now higher res than they were when he posted the links - I found a lot of improvement with simple Saturation and Contrast adjustments. A program like Photoshop Elements that lets you adjust Contrast separately for each color would be helpful on ones like the pink "cover sheet" sample.

Levy, Duke, and the Library of Congress American Heritage Collection are much better known now, and we keep using them. There are a couple of other US University collections that are useful, but less easily searched. Someone needs to dig up comparable sites for British pop music - especially perhaps the "Music Hall" stuff, unless I just missed the link(s).

John