Famitsu Game Boy Supplement

[SuperFancy]

I have scanned in 12 issues of this supplement from Famitsu magazine in 1990/1991 - would anyone be interesting if I uploaded them to Retro Mags. I currently have test version up on archive.org. Is the quality good enough??

 

I also have 9 issues of Game Boy Magazine and 8 issues of Faminaga's Game Boy Fan.

[kitsunebi]

First things first, just to confirm:

These are your own mags/supplements that you scanned and edited yourself?  We'd be grateful either way, but we can only host files here that our members have scanned themselves.

Assuming they are, my advice would be this:

You're clearly at the mercy of the drawbacks to flatbed scanning here.  The bleedthrough noticeable on most pages is a common flaw in flatbed scans.  Some people recommend taping black construction paper to the lid of your scanner, but chances are, you're still gonna get bleedthrough.  It can be eliminated by bumping up white levels, but that will usually also make the images on the rest of the page suffer.  So you probably just have to accept it.

Also, it's clear that the pages are still bound.  These are very short stapled supplements, so it's understandable that you want to keep them intact since they can be laid relatively flat.  Since none of the pages have graphics that go right to the edge of the page, it seems that you were able to crop out most of the distortion from the gutter side of each page.    For thicker mags or mags with graphics that go to the gutter edge of the page, debinding would be a necessity.  For something this short, though, what you have is acceptable.  The only blurry page seems to be the inside back cover.  I'm not sure a better scan of that page would be possible or not.

Finally, regarding format: There's nothing wrong with PDF, and many people prefer it, but here at Retromags we use the CBR format (for a number of reasons I won't get into here).  Also, I believe your file could be reduced in size without sacrificing any noticeable quality.  The RM standard size is 2200px high, though I personally save all of my mags at 2500px high.  This one is 2970px high, which isn't necessarily a huge problem, but a lot of people might not want to download a 36 page supplement that's over 200MB.  In case you'd like to compare for yourself, I resized your file to 2500px high (saved at quality lv.9 in Photoshop), and made a couple of extremely minor adjustments to the pages, including a tiny bit of cleanup to the back cover (I couldn't help myself).  The new size is 56MB, which is much more reasonable for something of this size (although you'd be welcome to keep the files as large as you like at archive.org). 

Here's the adjusted file: https://mega.nz/#!lNA2gKqa!sQXTzuZ1TzstikFpKcbiFDL1zRZroOVOsyDZKvWaNRs

What do you think?

 

[SuperFancy]

I do own all the issues that I am willing to submit and can provide evidence if required.

Thanks for all the advice, it's very helpful. 

 

This is my first time in a while trying to scan a magazine - i'm used to scanning in boxes and manuals. Plus I was just testing with the built in Mac software for scanning (and it is awful), any recommendations for better software is very welcome. I am willing to separate the pages but I wasn't willing to do that just for some tests.

[kitsunebi]

No worries about proving ownership, just have to check.  For every person who actually scans a mag around here we have at least 10 other well-intentioned people who find a scan elsewhere on the net and are anxious to help us out by uploading it here.  And to be fair, the rule that all of our mags are scans we made ourselves isn't jumping out at you from the main page or anything, so it's an understandable mistake.

I can't help you with software.  I use my scanner's software, and I never used a flatbed for scanning mags (well, I did scan my first release that way, but once I bought my ScanSnap I rescanned it and replaced the original file.)

As for separating pages, again, for a 30-page stapled supplement, it probably isn't necessary.  To be honest, even debound, a stapled mag is likely to have slightly curled pages near the spine edge that will be difficult to scan completely flat when using a flatbed (making the name sort of ironic), so it might not make much of a difference.   I'm not sure how long the other mags you mentioned are, but if they're thicker or especially if they're square-bound, then debinding would be necessary.