Scanning guideline? Quality standards? Special wishes?

[lytron]

So, I work on my debut here, and I just want to check a bit on the quality standards here.

I scan at 600dpi which is, I think, pretty good (you can actually see how the colors of screenshots consist of RGB dots), but I am not removing the pages from the binding (it would break my heart ;___;) and I am no photoshop wizard to remove some unpretty marks.

I uploaded a preview file below. This was scaled by 50%. You see the curving of the paper due to the binding on the left edge, and to the right, you see how stuff from the other side is shining through the paper.

Is this an endeavor I should strive to persue, or is this nothing that would help this project? Furthermore, can someone link me a tutorial for uploading here once I'm finished (which will unfortunately will take a long while)?

[kitsunebi]

Scanning at 600dpi is fine, but leaving a file at 600dpi or even 300dpi dimensions will result in an enormous filesize, so you'll have to reduce the size when editing the files.  The Retromags minimum standard size is 2200px high saved at compression level 9 in Photoshop.  My current scans are 2500px high. 

The bleedthrough is due to your scanner.  Famitsu is printed on high quality paper, and there wouldn't be any bleedthrough using a quality document scanner, but flatbed scanners generally aren't capable of getting the same results.  You could try taping black construction paper to the underside of the scanner lid and see if that helps.  Some of the bleedthrough can be mitigated in editing.

As for the curvature, unless the mag is very thin (which disqualifies a 180-250pg mag like Famitsu) it can't be avoided if you aren't willing to debind the mag.

Only team members are allowed to upload here (otherwise we'd have newbs constantly uploading files that don't belong to them that they found somewhere else on the net).  So once a file is completely finished, you would have to upload it to a free filehosting service, and post the link somewhere or PM an admin.  Once it is approved, they would be able to upload it for you.

As to whether your file would be approved, your best bet would be to scan and edit a selection of pages (include pages where the curvature is the worst) and upload them somewhere (at full, final-edit size) for us to look at.  If those get the go ahead, then you could finish the rest.  Of course, even in a worst-case scenario where a scan isn't deemed up to our quality standards, it would still be a valuable and welcome contribution to the preservation effort and could be hosted elsewhere (like archive.org).  I honestly am not the person to ask about approval, since I didn't come on board until after the current quality standards were in place.  I know that a number of files were purged from the site in the past for being unacceptable quality, but having never seen those files, I couldn't tell you what they looked like.  I'm unaware of any scans of still-bound mags made during my time here, so I'm not sure how that affects your chances of approval.

[lytron]

Thank you for your extensive, detailed answer. I held back to reply because I had the hope that someone of the persons who could answer the guide line stuff would say a word. :/ Anyways, maybe someone will join the discussion in the next few days to help me out there.

[kitsunebi]

I don't know that there's anything more they can tell you.  It's impossible to tell from that tiny sample you posted what kind of results you're getting.  As I said, your best bet at getting feedback is to scan and edit a selection of several pages and upload them somewhere that they can be downloaded from and looked at.  At that point, it will be possible to give advice/feedback. 

[KiwiArcader]

Definitely try putting black card behind the page when scanning. It helps reduce bleedthru from the other side of the page a LOT but it will darken the image somewhat.

For my flatbed scanner I bought a matt black sheet of some sort of card like kids use for artwork (got it from an art/stationery shop) and taped it over the white back plate on the scanner so I didn't have to keep putting between pages. Worked a treat.

And curl is bad but a good scan with curl is better than nothing at all. It's getting harder to acquire older rarer magazines so if someone is prepared to scan them but doesn't want to destroy their copy it's all good in my books.

[kitsunebi]

5 hours ago, KiwiArcader said:

Definitely try putting black card behind the page when scanning. It helps reduce bleedthru from the other side of the page a LOT but it will darken the image somewhat.

For my flatbed scanner I bought a matt black sheet of some sort of card like kids use for artwork (got it from an art/stationery shop) and taped it over the white back plate on the scanner so I didn't have to keep putting between pages. Worked a treat.

Yeah, our scanning guide is so weird.  It claims that a document scanner is worse because "it will cause more bleed-through than an flatbed scanner," but in my experience, the exact opposite is true.  I get pretty much zero bleed-through from my document scanner.  I don't own a flatbed anymore, but when I did, I definitely had to try to compensate by taping black paper to the lid.