Quality Of Official Releases

[meppi]

Due to the increased exposure that Retromags has been receiving from the people that own the magazines that we are trying to preserve, or have worked on them in the past or present, we feel the need to institute a form of quality control on the releases.

What this means right now is, that magazines in the download section that were marked with a lower case 'r' are being moved out of the download section until they can be edited and presented in the normal Retromags quality.

This is not meant to cause anyone any frustration or cause any confusion, these magazines are not being deleted.

They will be replaced with a suitable fully edited copy as soon as possible.

This is a move we are making to further show respect to the original owners of these magazines and to show that we are striving to present their work in the best and most faithful way we can.

The reason we started putting out "raw" versions back in the day was due to time constrains. A way to keep the project going even with all the difficulties we had back then.

Seeing how the community has grown over the years, and how we have a healthy group of contributors and steady flow of releases, the need to release unfinished editions just isn't there anymore.

Furthermore, it might give the wrong impression about the project and the hard work that all of our members are putting into it.

Imagine someone finding out about retromags and downloading his or her first magazine only to find out that that particular issue is so badly damaged (not cropped, slanted, pages missing, tears, etc) that it's hard to look at or even read.

It's not hard to imagine that said person would decide not to look at any other issues, thinking they are all of the same dubious quality.

What might be even worse is the possibility of someone who originally worked on these magazines, might want to check up on what exactly we are doing with the magazines they put so much effort into.

Only to stumble upon a "raw" release and decide that we are doing their magazine injustice by presenting them in such a light.

I think we can all agree that such an event would not be good for retromags, to say the very least.

That being said, we value every contributor.

Don't be discouraged if you aren't able to edit the scans yourself.

We have people waiting to start editing raw scans, so "raw" scans are still very welcome.

Even though the scans that need editing might not be up on the main page from day one, they will be edited and uploaded within a reasonable timeframe.

We trust the members of Retromags that are donating magazines to continue doing so with their usual quality and that hopefully, everyone will understand that this move is for the better of the project.

Thank you for your understanding in this matter, if you have any questions or concerns please feel free to post them here and we will do what we can to answer them to the best of our abilities.

[Phillyman]

Well said Meppi

Most of the "Raw" scans are from me anyways, so there temporary removal should not offend anyone. We will try our best to get them back up as soon as possible.

Thanks

Phillyman

[E-Day]

That orange text is really hard to read on the light blue background.

Well said Meppi

Most of the "Raw" scans are from me anyways, so there temporary removal should not offend anyone. We will try our best to get them back up as soon as possible.

Thanks

Phillyman

Some of those may need to be scanned again since they came out very very crooked, and have a lot of bleed through. No more using your ADF!

[Phillyman]

That orange text is really hard to read on the light blue background.

Some of those may need to be scanned again since they came out very very crooked, and have a lot of bleed through. No more using your ADF!

I heard you fool

I stopped once you voiced your complaints months ago.....I still have all the pages in a closet.....start compiling a list of what issues need what pages....and I will try to knock out some each weekend.

[triverse]

I heard you fool

I stopped once you voiced your complaints months ago.....I still have all the pages in a closet.....start compiling a list of what issues need what pages....and I will try to knock out some each weekend.

That is good to hear that you still have the pages there Philly.  I have been editing the releases as I have time and got stuck on issue #90 of EGM (didn't realize it was over 220 pages big, I am at page 160 or so now).  

As far as the concerns about the bleed through on your ADF releases, I haven't really run into that problem, I am experiencing more of a severe cropping of the pages when they were cut from the magazine and after editing, loosing some of the text on the edges (some is already cut).

The crookedness is fixed easily with the rotate feature found in most decent photo editing software, it just takes time to get right.  No biggie.  I will get you a list of pages that are needing a rescan though (there are a few that maybe could benefit from it but not a bunch so far).

Back on topic, that is extremely well worded there meppi.  Couldn't have said it better myself.  There are quite a few issues in the Raw section right now with plenty more to be placed there.  

If any member has downloaded a release and they feel it should be redone please, let us know so that the necessary corrections can be made to it and it can be re-released.  The original uploader will not loose credit for a re-edit.

[Waremonger]

I agree with this 100%.

Imagine someone finding out about retromags and downloading his or her first magazine only to find out that that particular issue is so badly damaged (not cropped, slanted, pages missing, tears, etc) that it's hard to look at or even read.

In fact, this happened to me. The first issue I downloaded was a "raw" scan where the pages were crooked and had no editing at all. I was a bit turned off but came back a few months later and downloaded another mag that had been edited. I never spoke up about this because I didn't want to offend anyone who had taken the time to scan the issue - and I can definitely see it from the perspective of someone who just doesn't have the time to do the editing as it can be very laborious.

[Guest s1500]

Just out of curiosity, what dpi does everyone scan at? I go for no less than 300dpi. 100 dpi is just asking for moire patterns, depending how the mag is published. 300 dpi and you are in the clear, free to resize down as much as you want. This gives me an average of 55 megs per pair of pages.

As for straightening, it's a discipline. I go and look for the "butt" of the tops & bottoms of the page divisions, and apply the line straightening there. Often my straightens are less than a degree, and the end result is near perfect.

For poor condition magazines, where the pages have separated, I just do the 2 pages individually, then stitch em back together. If there are photos/graphics that span both pages, I try to line them up to the best of my ability.

And yes, I do all of this heavily zoomed in, down to the pixels.

[triverse]

300 is the minimum at the moment (I have a couple of releases from another member at 600 DPI and while pretty detailed, they are taking forever to edit-I am on an older machine).  So far your scans, s1500 have been awesome and extremely easy to work with, just takes time to complete.

[E-Day]

300 dpi is more than enough. No one is intending on printing these, so anything higher is useless. Even 300 is too much for viewing on a screen that does 72dpi, but it does let you zoom in a lot and whatnot.