Semi-New Release: New Scans of Electronic Gaming Monthly Issues 51 and 53

[E-Day]

Retromags Presents!

 

Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 51

October 1993
 

 

Database Entry!

 

Download Directly!

 

 

Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 53

December 1993
 

 

Database Entry!

 

Download Directly!

 

Thanks to pauljustice for donating the magazines (and to me for scanning them!)

[kitsunebi]

As always, an explanation of what has been updated would be appreciated.

[E-Day]

The entirety of both magazines.

[Sean697]

Deleted by me.

Edited September 25, 2016 by Sean697

[Sean697]

Ok so 53 had some major issues. It wasn't previously cropped or edited and had a missing page so this is a great update.

51 was OK with nothing major wrong with it, but it was an older issue at a lower resolution.

(Actually I just browsed the older issue of 51 and it was pretty fantastic quality. I'll have DL the new one and check it out.)

Thanks for the updates!

Edited September 24, 2016 by Sean697

[kitsunebi]

The scans are a definite improvement, but issue 53 is broken.

 

The following pages are corrupt:

2, 24, 80, 100, 138, 179, 220

[kthrower]

I always loved the super collage painting of SSF2 that is on issue 51.  It's usually cropped, but looks awesome seeing the full painting.

[E-Day]

I am uploading it again. My local copy is fine, but the loaded version is broken.

[E-Day]

Fixed.

[Sean697]

A couple of things. Issue 53 is a huge improvment on the old one. But there are a couple of fixes. The first is in the old scan, there is a page in the magazine between 98 and 99 that has a contest entry card and entry number for the Hero match and win. Maybe you could take the page from the existing scan and ad it to the new one so it will be complete. Its just a white page with black graphics so resolution shouldnt matter as there is nothing high res on it.

 

The second issue is at the end of the magazine you got some pages out of order. Starting at page 357 you have the wrong page.

 

Your page 357 is actually page 359.Your page 358 is actually page 360. Your 359 is actually page 357. Your page 360 is actually page 358. From page 361 on the pages are correct.

 

 

As far as issue 51 I think I kind of prefer the older one. (You new scan of course includes the subscriber only page the old scan did not have.) While your new one is great, it increases the resoltution from 1440 width to about 1650 width (2200 pixel height) the color correction is a little off. Comparing side by side the reds look more oarnge and the colors seem a little over saturated. I could post some examples, but there are some images the tone shift changes the shinobi 3 boss in the ad from a purulish  red to pink. And the reds instead of being like coke red are like very light red to light oarnge. Also the whites look noticable creme from being shifted to the red direction too. While there are some great pages where your corrections made a nice as you would call it pop look, alot of the other pages are really off. (Your blues are fantastic.) Im sure your happy with with it and probrably wont fix that. But try looking at the two side by side and you will see a huge difference.

[kitsunebi]

As far as issue 51 I think I kind of prefer the older one. (You new scan of course includes the subscriber only page the old scan did not have.) While your new one is great, it increases the resoltution from 1440 width to about 1650 width (2200 pixel height) the color correction is a little off. Comparing side by side the reds look more oarnge and the colors seem a little over saturated. I could post some examples, but there are some images the tone shift changes the shinobi 3 boss in the ad from a purulish  red to pink. And the reds instead of being like coke red are like very light red to light oarnge. Also the whites look noticable creme from being shifted to the red direction too. While there are some great pages where your corrections made a nice as you would call it pop look, alot of the other pages are really off. (Your blues are fantastic.) Im sure your happy with with it and probrably wont fix that. But try looking at the two side by side and you will see a huge difference.

 

Yeah, I've noticed that the "how to" guide recommends bumping up the saturation which is just kind of insane to me.  I guess if it was necessary to compensate for mediocre scanning equipment, or if the display you look at the files on wasn't calibrated correctly, it might at least seem to be beneficial, but on everything I've ever scanned, increasing the saturation or adjusting the color balance on anything other than black/white levels would only decrease the quality and accuracy of the image.

[E-Day]

A couple of things. Issue 53 is a huge improvment on the old one. But there are a couple of fixes. The first is in the old scan, there is a page in the magazine between 98 and 99 that has a contest entry card and entry number for the Hero match and win. Maybe you could take the page from the existing scan and ad it to the new one so it will be complete. Its just a white page with black graphics so resolution shouldnt matter as there is nothing high res on it.

 

The second issue is at the end of the magazine you got some pages out of order. Starting at page 357 you have the wrong page.

 

Your page 357 is actually page 359.Your page 358 is actually page 360. Your 359 is actually page 357. Your page 360 is actually page 358. From page 361 on the pages are correct.

 

 

As far as issue 51 I think I kind of prefer the older one. (You new scan of course includes the subscriber only page the old scan did not have.) While your new one is great, it increases the resoltution from 1440 width to about 1650 width (2200 pixel height) the color correction is a little off. Comparing side by side the reds look more oarnge and the colors seem a little over saturated. I could post some examples, but there are some images the tone shift changes the shinobi 3 boss in the ad from a purulish  red to pink. And the reds instead of being like coke red are like very light red to light oarnge. Also the whites look noticable creme from being shifted to the red direction too. While there are some great pages where your corrections made a nice as you would call it pop look, alot of the other pages are really off. (Your blues are fantastic.) Im sure your happy with with it and probrably wont fix that. But try looking at the two side by side and you will see a huge difference.

 

If you have the page from the old scan of issue 53, send it along. I don't have a copy of the old scan anymore, unfortunately.

 

As for the whites being noticable creme, that comes from the source material. The actual white on the pages are not white. They are an off white; my colour corrections reflect the actual page quite well. I could try to make them pure white, but this was something you complained about before as it would make faint grey text illegible.

 

Here is what my scanner spits out. This image is cropped (and the resolution dropped for the sake of size on here), but the colours are not yet corrected:

 

 

While the whites are close to the actual page, the boss is more pink than the purple it should be, and the reds not as deep. This is the actual scanner; either the it's not dark enough behind the page as it goes through the ADF, or the scanner hardware isn't all that good.

 

Here is the same page on my Canon flatbed, cropped but not yet colour corrected:

 

 

The white is still a bit off though closer to pure white even though the actual page isn't, but the other colours are more true to the actual page. I would prefer if I could scan everything on the flatbed, but it is far too time consuming, and I would scan far less and would be much less inclined to scan these days if I had to only use the flatbed. I would like to afford one of those fancy Fujitsu ADFs, but they are way too expensive.

 

There is only so much colour correction I can do before the quality of the image starts to deteriorate. And it also depends on your monitor. I am colour correcting based on one of my monitors. And even though both of my monitors are identical models and everything in the settings are the same, the other one is darker. So the reds look dark enough on one, but not the other. The boss is not purple regardless of which screen i view him on.

 

Below is the scan through the ADF with adjusted colour correction settings:

 

 

The reds are closer to what they should be, but the white is still not perfectly white, which is fine because that is how the actual page is. The boss is still not the right shade, but I cannot get that corrected.

 

I have to use the equipment on hand and try to match the scans to the page as best that I can. They won't be perfect, but they will be as close as I can get them. These new settings seem to work better on this page, but they do not work well on other pages, like page 10 or page 38, where it changes the purple squiggly background in the left column to blue. I don't have the time or inclination to fine tune each page to match the printed page; I need something that will generally improve the scans that the scanner spits out. I know I am not using the best ADF for this since the all-in-one colour laser printer that it's part of is a little more than three times the price of my dedicated Canon flatbed. But I can scan far faster with it, and scan two magazines at the same time if I want to using both scanners at once.

 

However, if someone wants to donate one of those fancy Fujitsu ADF scanners to me, I will gladly accept it . They are far better than what I have, faster, scan straighter and capture colours more accurately. They can throw in a perfectly calibrated high end monitor at the same time .

 

And compared to the other adjustments that are made, the saturation bump is almost negligible. It doesn't make that big of a difference, especially compared to the adjustments to the levels, brightness, and contrast.

[Sean697]

Wow that's way more work than nessacary to show that lol. But ya I think your flatbed scanner, even without corrections looks really good. I'll get that page to you shortly.

[E-Day]

Well, I was trying to see if I could fix the issue you pointed out with the ADF scan, and I wanted to see how the Canon handled the page. So why not upload them?

 

I know the Canon flatbed is far better. The problem is that scanning with it is slow compared to the ADF, and I have to do it all manually. After scanning as much as I have, I have gotten lazy, and I don't want to spend hours in front of the computer scanning pages by hand. It's bad enough having to spend the time doing the editing

[RetroDefense]

Not that I don't appreciate the efforts to produce colors as accurately as possible, but honestly, I think it's something of a no-win situation.  Scanners will vary, software will vary, displays will vary, human eyesight will vary.  I'm more concerned about the written content - the text and related context.

 

There's also the matter of quantity vs. quality.  Meaning, the 1000s of gaming magazines still left to scan versus RetroMags' standards.  Without ADFs we're fighting a losing battle so I think it's a fair compromise.

 

Point is, I can look past a case of pink vs. purple if it means more history can be preserved.    As tech improves - and prices drop - we can always update the scans eventually.  As long as we save the source material.

[Sean697]

Well I agree, I try not to get too anal. My only point is, and my perspective is I have a close interest on fixing problems in our EGM scans, is that the old scan actually looked really good. It was a decent resolution, greater than 1200 pixels tall, had great editing, and was cropped, and looked really good. Had it been me, I would have spent the time scanning something we didn't have or that had some issues. I realize there are issues with when people donate something and feeling obligated to scan it , and also striving to to improve our scans when we can. I mean I'm not even super happy yet with with my edits. My only consolation is my Canon flatbed, which I believe is the same or similar model as eday's actual makes a really nice scan from the start, that's why I bought it, based on reviews for consumer level scanners with great color accuracy and speed. It puts out real good color, probrably because it uses an LED light, and the adjustments I have to make are minimal. So I actually don't spend a lot of time adjusting things. Even though I always feel it could be better. I'm probrably my own worst critic. I mean to me, the fact we have have an update to the other issue, 53 is fantastic. I don't want to critize the great work eday has done pumping out these scans. I won't say any more on it. The good far ouways any bad in this case. I just wanted to say something because I have such a vested interest in our EGM collection.

[Sean697]

Here's the two pages for EGM 53.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/93892y9tc69644n/Electronic%20Gaming%20Monthly%20Issue%20053%20December%201993%20page%20098a.jpg?dl=0

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1d6547c40dyr47o/Electronic%20Gaming%20Monthly%20Issue%20053%20December%201993%20page%20098b.jpg?dl=0

[E-Day]

It's not like the scan can never be redone again. Even though the other scan was good, because I have the ADF, the scanning takes no effort and the editing is simple because most of the page are pretty straight. And it gets one more magazine out of my house . For me, the most important thing is getting the scans done and up while turning out something that looks great. It doesn't have to look perfect, and for me colours that aren't always exact aren't a huge issue. Unless you have the physical copy, most people wouldn't know that boss was supposed to be that muted purple colour. I keep all the cropped but uncorrected scans as well, so if anyone can ever figure out how to get the colours perfect from those scans, they will be available.

 

Issue 53 is now up with those ballot cards.