I liked the email so much I thought it'd make a perfect post.
Some good stuff here! Thanks Robert!
"Here is a great example of how Topps would remove certain elements in the background of photos for their cards using airbrushing when it really didn’t seem to be all that necessary. On the left we see Mike Lum batting against the Pirates in Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium during the 1978 season. On the right is a photo take during that same game, with no Topps airbrushing applied to it. I’m not sure what was gained by painstakingly removing the photographers and their tri-pods.
I guess Topps was wanting a clean background for this card as well as the cards for Johnny Bench and Dave Concepcion (below):
However, they chose to leave photographers and their equipment in the cards for Ray Knight, Ken Griffey, and Joe Morgan although they certainly removed portions of a photographer who was wearing blue jeans and a red shirt because you can see remnants of him in the Griffey and Morgan cards:
In the cards we also see some strange happenings in the crowd as it appears that there are flesh-colored arms (or limbs of some sort) next to and below the big fella in blue in the Lum card. What could they have done THAT for?
Hope this was of interest to you. It always fascinated me the airbrushing “hack jobs” that Topps pawned off on us with some of those horrific baseball hats as well as the terrible football helmets in the 70s. Classic..."