Local Scanners Accepting Donations

[E-Day]

Well, I will make more of an effort to use it going forward. I probably won't for all the upcoming guides because it requires creating entries for them and I only want ot do that when I am ready to release them, but I may go ahead and create those ahead of time at some point as well.

[kitsunebi]

I've never liked our current strategy guide database, anyway (man, am I sure glad we don't organize our magazines by placing everything from a single publisher in the same category), so I can easily overlook omissions of guide entries, since I pretend that that database doesn't exist in the first place.  In fact, I'm not sure why that tab at the top says "Databases."  Surely there's only one database - for magazines? It's the only one I'm aware of, anyway.

[MigJmz]

Update: I just need to re-scan 5 pages and I'll be done. Should be done Tuesday at the most.

[MkMoveList]

Is scanning without debinding frowned upon? Does everyone here besides me debind their magazines before scanning?

[MkMoveList]

OT: I have acquired the November 1994 issue of SWATPRO(Baraka cover) for scanning.

[MigJmz]

23 minutes ago, MkMoveList said:

Is scanning without debinding frowned upon? Does everyone here besides me debind their magazines before scanning?

 

Yes debinding is necessary to make the best quality scans that would be accepted on RetroMags. All mags you see here have been debinded which is why they look so good after some photoshop edits. 

[kitsunebi]

Yep.  All full length magazines get debound.  Just like every single professional scanning service does it (unless you're trying to scan a Gutenberg Bible, or something.)  A single magazine gets sacrificed in order to provide the best quality digital copy to literally anyone and everyone in the world who wants it.

Very short staple-bound supplements and whatnot (less than 50 pages) can be scanned without debinding on a flatbed without botching the results completely (although a debound mag scanned with an ADF scanner will always look better, no matter how short the mag.)

But scanning a full-length mag while it's still bound (especially square-bound mags) means that a good portion of the page on the gutter side is unusable.  It's either left in place as strip of warped/shaded/discolored page curvature (which obviously looks bad), or else the scanner tries to hide it by cropping the hell out of the page (which also looks bad and destroys advertisements and other artwork which is printed right up to the edge of the page.)

[kitsunebi]

3 hours ago, MkMoveList said:

OT: I have acquired the November 1994 issue of SWATPRO(Baraka cover) for scanning.

E-Day has already scanned this.

I think maybe we need a new rule.  Anyone who wants to contribute by donating a mag or scanning a mag needs to PM E-Day and ask if he already did it months ago but just hasn't uploaded it yet, because this is becoming a pretty common problem.

[E-Day]

I don't debind every magazine. I only debind the ones that are perfect bound as it's very tough to get a good scan along the spine edge. Staple bound magazines stay in one piece. The SWATPro issues I scanned were not debound, though the four issues of Tips & Tricks Codebook that I scanned did get cut apart.

As for the November 1994 SWATPro, that will be getting released within the next week.

[MkMoveList]

E-day, I've noticed you've been providing updated scans of GamePro magazine. Well, issue July 1994 is in serious need of an update, page 103 has a fugly hole torn into it.

[MigJmz]

55 minutes ago, MkMoveList said:

E-day, I've noticed you've been providing updated scans of GamePro magazine. Well, issue July 1994 is in serious need of an update, page 103 has a fugly hole torn into it.

ya that one needs to be re-done or at least re-edited . Why is there a credits page before the cover page.  It ruins the book mode view .

[E-Day]

1 hour ago, MkMoveList said:

E-day, I've noticed you've been providing updated scans of GamePro magazine. Well, issue July 1994 is in serious need of an update, page 103 has a fugly hole torn into it.

 

16 minutes ago, MigJmz said:

ya that one needs to be re-done or at least re-edited . Why is there a credits page before the cover page.  It ruins the book mode view .

I do have an extra copy of that one that I can split down the middle and scan. I'll dig it out this weekend. 

[kitsunebi]

3 hours ago, E-Day said:

I don't debind every magazine. I only debind the ones that are perfect bound as it's very tough to get a good scan along the spine edge. Staple bound magazines stay in one piece. The SWATPro issues I scanned were not debound, though the four issues of Tips & Tricks Codebook that I scanned did get cut apart.

As for the November 1994 SWATPro, that will be getting released within the next week.

The SWATPro issues are quite thin (70 pgs), so scanning while still bound is going to get more usable results than scanning, say, a 250 page staple-bound Famitsu (most USA mags of this size are square-bound).

But as I said before, even with a 70 page mag, you're left with two options: 1. leave the page curvature visible in the scan, or 2. crop it out.

I normally don't download videogame mags, but I took a look at the newest one released at the moment (Swatpro 7).  Please keep in mind that I'm not directing this at E-Day, who crops his releases, bound or not, in the service of speed (and is our most valuable/productive scanner as a result).  I'm directing this at new scanners who may be considering their options on how they should go about doing things.

First of all, despite our rigorous "quality standards" at Retromags, it's important to note that it only applies to how a magazine looks when viewing a single page at a time.  So long as page one looks good and page two looks good, it doesn't matter what page one and page two look like when viewed side by side.  So cropping even large portions of the side of the page is totally acceptable here, so long as you don't crop away too much text in the articles (cropping away text in the advertisements is OK, especially ones that cross both pages). 

So stuff like this is OK:

That's from an article, but it could just as easily be an ad.  The only thing being ruined by not debinding the mag is the effect of the picture and logo when viewing the pages side by side.  If you were to view each page individually, you'd probably not even realize that they don't match up and part of the image is missing.

Stuff like this from the same issue is less desirable, but simply can't be helped if you decide not to debind your magazines:

In this example, text from the article's photo captions has been rendered illegible from cropping.  Again, this is objectively quite bad, and should be avoided when possible, but the only way to do so when text crosses both pages like this is to debind the magazine so that an edge-to-edge scan can be made.

 

BOTTOM LINE: Most people only read mags one page at a time, so they won't even know that the page has been cropped.  So even though myself and a few others uphold ourselves to a "higher than Retromags" standard (though not as pedantic as an OOPA standard ), and take great care to treat every part of the page equally, the reality is that the gutter side of each page is not given equal rights by our scanning and editing laws.  So it's up to you, to decide how to scan something, really.  Bound and cropped scans have been and will be approved.  But they will never be as good or as complete as a debound scan, because there are no secret techniques that can allow a scanner to properly scan the entirety of a bound page - it simply is not physically possible.

PS: I suppose I should point out that when I say "debound" mags will provide better results, I'm talking about losslessly debound mags.  For stapled mags, this is as simple as cutting the page perfectly down the center line.  For squarebound mags, this means taking the mag apart with heat or possibly by using an exacto knife to but each page from the spine. However, debinding a mag using a guillotine paper slicer to chop off the gutter side of the mag is just another form of cropping, and will result in images similar to the above examples.

[Iggs]

Hi,

I need to figure out exactly what issues of Nintendo power I have but I have complete issues from around issue 120 through 170.  Is there someone who wants to catalog them?  I can get more details and I'm kinda unsure what to do with them. 

[MigJmz]

8 hours ago, Iggs said:

Hi,

I need to figure out exactly what issues of Nintendo Power I have but I have complete issues from around issue 120 through 170.  Is there someone who wants to catalog them?  I can get more details and I'm kinda unsure what to do with them. 

Are you donating these? Not sure what you mean by cataloging.

[kitsunebi]

6 minutes ago, MigJmz said:

Are you donating these? Not sure what you mean by cataloging.

Most of those have already been scanned and its very likely that the rest are already owned by either E-Day or Phillyman (though I'm not sure if that last one is relevant anymore).  Maybe he means indexing the contents?  If he DOES mean donating for scanning, we'll need @E-Day at least to chime in with what (if any) issues are needed.

[Iggs]

Hello.  Sorry for the confusion.  Yeah I'd be willing to part with them for archiving/scanning if shipping is covered.  I am not seeking a king's ransom or anything for the collection but I'm also exploring selling them. 

[E-Day]

The donation I got last year has Nintendo Power up to Issue 110. I do have another box that I got last year as well that has even more issue, and I may have another box from years ago as well. Let me go through the other boxes and see what it has.

[E-Day]

So among the other donations I got, I have Nintendo Power Issues 89-111, 113-165, 168-192.

A lot of the covers have "wear" on them. I am not sure what else to call it. White parts look dirty, as though it was sitting against a dark back cover of another issue and some of the ink rubbed off on it.

I also have the first four issues of Nintendo Power Advance.

[kitsunebi]

15 minutes ago, E-Day said:

So among the other donations I got, I have Nintendo Power Issues 89-111, 113-165, 168-192.

A lot of the covers have "wear" on them. I am not sure what else to call it. White parts look dirty, as though it was sitting against a dark back cover of another issue and some of the ink rubbed off on it.

I also have the first four issues of Nintendo Power Advance.

So that means the only issue being offered that's needed is #167, unless someone else has it.

[E-Day]

Unless all his covers are clean and don't have the same issue the ones I have do, then yes.

[kitsunebi]

Well, if he was really looking to help out and wasn't interested in making a profit from his collection, he'd be better off selling what he's got and using that money to win an auction or two of issues we don't already have standing by to be scanned, then donate those.  I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to donate 49 mags we've already got just so editing the cover page for each one goes a little quicker.

[E-Day]

I don't think asking for the shipping to be covered is trying to make a profit.

And I am not sure how much editing I would be willing to do on a lot of covers that look like this:

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, E-Day said:

I don't think asking for the shipping to be covered is trying to make a profit.

I think you misunderstood me somewhere.

In my opinion, donating 49 issues that have already been donated to you for scanning is a total waste of resources.  So I suggested that he should follow through on the decision to sell them, which he mentioned he was considering, since he can absolutely sell 50 Nintendo Powers on eBay with no problem.

However, this gives him two options.  If he wants to make a profit, he can keep the money and call it a day.  If he wants to help out the site, he can use that money to obtain mags we don't already have in line to be scanned and donate those instead.  I hope that's more clear.

If all that's wrong is some dirty covers, we should be asking if he owns a flatbed and can scan the covers for you before selling them.  Or putting a call out to all of our members for cover scans.  Or  @TheRedEye (can't remember the name of his museum) who surely has those issues on hand?  A cover scan is non-destructive, so it's much easier to find volunteers to help out.

Worst-case scenario, just leave the cover dirty.  It might not be the Retromags way, but I think it should be painfully clear by now that no one really cares whether or not a mag is edited well, judging by the fact that almost all of the Retromags members who scan magazines don't actually release them here to avoid our rules, yet I'd bet they've never received a single criticism over the quality of their releases.

[E-Day]

I did indeed misunderstand you . And getting cover scans would be helpful, from whoever might be willing to provide them I am sure The Video Game History Foundation has every Nintendo Power already. As does Phillyman most likely