The Mustek A3 Scanner

[Guest s1500]

Hello everyone. I've been contributing Videogaming & Computergaming Illustrated magazines to this site, so I thought I'd finally chime in.

If it's one scanner I can recommend(partially) for magazine scans, It's the Mustek A3 scanner. You can open a magazine & scan 2 full pages. Add some weights to it and it mostly removes the distortions towards the center. I liberated it from my former job when I got laid off. During the days I was working there, I scanned many zines & even some album covers. You can do an album in 2 passes without distortion!

Wish I could find the attachment menu on here, for I could provide a picture of one.

But, this Texas size scanner is not without its flaws. The drivers are VERY flakey with it. The built-in software is terrible as you cannot take the training wheels off(ie set the DPI manually, etc) and it has a horrible interface. The TWAIN drivers are okay and get the job done. Regardless of what app you use to get to the TWAIN drivers, don't be surprised if it barks back saying the scanner's not connected. You will be disconnecting & reconnecting the power supply connector quite a few times until it catches.

It won't work with Paint Shop Pro versions 10 on up. But version 9 is the best to use in general. I can't find my PSP9 disc, but Ifranview is better since you can do batch scanning to files. This saves quite a bit of time since you don't have to do file-save as each time.

Doesn't work with Linux(at least with XSANE). Then again, neither does my older, smaller scanner.

So if you can get an A3 seconhand, buy one. I saw one on ebay, but the BIN is $179, not worth it with the flakey driver support. So far, I have yet to find another flatbed scanner of equal or better size in the consumer market.

Wow, I feel old. I remember in the early 1990s when flatbed scanners were only affordable by the richest kings of Europe. There used to be those impractical, grayscale only hand scanners. They were terrible.

[triverse]

s1500, welcome to Retromags, I am glad you have decided to come over and are participating here on the forums. It is going to get interesting soon so hang out for a bit, enoy the reading material available.

The Mustek A3 must be huge if you can open a magazine and scan the open pages at one time. I am going to have to check into one (although I am lookg for something that is compatible with Linux).

You can add pictures to your post by going to a site such as Imageshack and uploading it there. Just make sure to click the link or preview pic they give you till you get to where it is just the picture you uploaded on the screen and nothing else. Copy the link in the address bar and click on the button up there that looks like a squarish thing with an orangish dot in it (second from the left). You aren't the only one that remembers those crappy handheld scanners.

Paste the link in that window that pops up and click ok. If it is done right, you will see your pic in your post (you can check it with the preview option).

Here are two covers of the 3 I have so far that I am editing for s1500 for those interested in what issues he has donated:

[Guest s1500]

I have not had much luck with scanners nor webcams with Linux(0 so far), and just gave up after awhile.

What challenges me is trying to get hardcover-bound magazines to scan. Stapled ones are a breeze, and I even went as far as de-stapling a few magazines and scanning the issues. You do have to slice & dice up the individual pages though afterward since they will not be in sequential order.

I have figured out a method for scanning mags though:

1. Scan 'em open-faced, 2 pages at a time at 300 dpi.

2. Open 'em up in Paint Shop Pro & apply the straighten command. Don't be surprised if you straighten them out to less than a degree(.50).

Don't rely on the absolute top/bottom edges since you might see previous pages under the stack that will veer off the true straighten angle.

Try to look for true horizontal(or vertical) lines somewhere on the cover or page. The top corner of the V & G on the Tron issue will suffice. If you suspect it is already straightened, you can do a quick check by dragging a guide to see.

3. Crop away!

Typically I just give them filenames of pg1-2, pg3-4, but when it comes to uploading them I use batch rename to give it a truly unique name. For Videogaming & ComputerGaming Illustrated, I give it vg-cgi_April83_pg1-2. That gives it a unique enough filename so all the issues can be on the same directory if need be. EZ sorting in any file manager too.

As for photoshopping out the blemishes & rips, that's a different discipline. I've spent many hours with the clone tool in PSP fixing up blemishes in album covers. It's trying to straighten out album section scans that got to be too much.

[kbf_private_joker]

Your workflow nearly matches mine.

One thing I might suggest though. Always have the same height/width for all pages. Even if you don't center the crop box in the same place on each page for whatever reason, getting the same size is important. If you don't, when opening in a comic book reader, it can look a bit funny because one page might be zoomed in more than the other. I made this mistake on my first mag scan and it did not look as pretty as subsequent ones.

[Guest s1500]

Your workflow nearly matches mine.

One thing I might suggest though. Always have the same height/width for all pages. Even if you don't center the crop box in the same place on each page for whatever reason, getting the same size is important. If you don't, when opening in a comic book reader, it can look a bit funny because one page might be zoomed in more than the other. I made this mistake on my first mag scan and it did not look as pretty as subsequent ones.

I try my best with that one. PSP has the ability to save crop presets so you could save a preset & center it right, and crop away. When I'm doing the straightening & cropping(of anything) I typically zoom into the pixel level.

I used to work for Jasc Software, later Corel Software, so that's why I use PSP. Was on the quality assurance team for quite a long time to know it inside & out.