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marktrade

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Happy Thanksgiving! As some of you may know by now, my Patreon page received a big boost from the attention given to it by Jason Scott, who wrote about my work a few days ago. I'm very thankful to everyone who has come out and shown their support, making this a great holiday for me.

 

Until now I've been saving the 600 DPI versions of scans offline for when they'd be more technologically feasible to share, but Jason encouraged me to go ahead and start uploading them. I gave it some thought and realized there's no reason to keep waiting, so that's what I'll be doing from now on. The files will be huge and many of you will think it's overkill, but I believe they're worth it for the smoother text, better OCR, and well the overkill! I am a fan of overkill (probably from playing too much FFX). Really though 600 DPI is the suggested minimum to scanning Asian text and I'll be uploading a lot of Japanese mags. It's only overkill for Western text
reference magazines like Tips & Tricks where you may not be reading long form for aesthetics or pleasure, or older EGMs that already have larger-than-average text.

 

I'll be working hard in the coming days to impress my new patrons so they know they made the right choice. Thanks again!

 

https://www.patreon.com/marktrade

http://archive.org/details/@marktrade

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Will you offer resized versions as well?  It's not a deal killer if you don't - I can always resize them myself for my personal use.

 

I scan Japanese mags at 600dpi but resize to 2400px height and have no problem reading the Japanese text.  If I did, trust me, I would keep higher res versions, since I'm basically archiving my own collection and discarding the originals as I do so.  I would never throw a mag away if it didn't have an archival quality scan.

 

You're right about overkill though...wow.  Yes storage is cheap these days, but I've already got 7HDDs (24.5TB total) and am out of power outlets for more :D  so unless they happen to be 1000 pages long, I don't really want a lot of 1.3 GB magazines in my collection.

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I don't think he knows the ramifications of 600 dpi. Or is thinking your 300 dpi is 600 dpi because of confusion about your Patreon message about scanning in 600 dpi on your Patreon. Though sounds like you could upload them at that resolution on Archive and just give is the normal stuff here. With the archive link we could at least have a choice.

Edited by Sean697
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I'll definitely still upload stuff here in accordance with Retromags rules.

 

But I'm pretty certain Jason knows the ramifications. The purpose of a large 600 DPI file isn't to pad user collections, but to be a master file from which user files are derived, be they searchable PDFs or raw text files or some other kind of file.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey I have an issue (bagged no less) that I got in an auction for the FF7 EGM cover of the PSM FF7 cover issue. Unfortunately it won't fit on my scanner bed as it is to wide. Could I mail it to you to scan? If you don't want to edit it I'll do the editing if you upload the raw scans. Or you can do the whole shebang. I just need someone who has the ability to scan it.

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Hey I have an issue (bagged no less) that I got in an auction for the FF7 EGM cover of the PSM FF7 cover issue. Unfortunately it won't fit on my scanner bed as it is to wide. Could I mail it to you to scan? If you don't want to edit it I'll do the editing if you upload the raw scans. Or you can do the whole shebang. I just need someone who has the ability to scan it.

I'm a little confused. Are you just talking about a cover piece or an entire issue?
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All six of my issues of InterActivity have been uploaded to ADO.

Today I finished editing and uploading an issue of Mead Publishing's Electronic Entertainment (not IDG's). It's the first time I've scanned an entire issue with a flatbed and without separating any of the pages. It's only 44 pages, so it's of a manageable download size as well!

 

https://archive.org/details/ElectronicEntertainment198309

 

Next I'll be uploading some various data discs from the 90s.

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It's only 44 pages, so it's of a manageable download size as well!

 

I've been wondering if you've gotten any feedback from all those new patreon supporters since you switched to 600dpi uploads.  For me, the files are too big and any improvement in fidelity is too insignificant to be noticeable at the size they're displayed at when I read them.  I know I can resize them myself, but I'm an unfortunate combination of busy and lazy, so I've stopped downloading anything you've been uploading lately.  On the plus side, if everybody started doing this, I'd probably only download the mags I really want, and I wouldn't have 650GB of mags on my HD. :)

 

edit: I suppose I should clarify that I've got no problems with 600dpi scans (I scan everything at 600dpi as well) but rather the pixel size the files are saved in.  But that's probably different for every mag, so I'm just referring to them as 600dpi scans for convenience's sake.  I guess un-resized 600dpi scans would be more accurate.

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There have been zero complaints. All the feedback has been positive. Half the time people have just been reassuring me that I don't need to update every day and I shouldn't burn myself out. I am very lucky to have such support, but also very happy to provide my best work. And I think my best work right now is in 600dpi.

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There have been zero complaints. All the feedback has been positive. Half the time people have just been reassuring me that I don't need to update every day and I shouldn't burn myself out. I am very lucky to have such support, but also very happy to provide my best work. And I think my best work right now is in 600dpi.

 

That's cool.  I understand your point of view and agree that you shouldn't compromise the quality of your work for anyone.  I know how frustrating it is for me every time RetroCDN takes our files and shrinks them to 150dpi or whatever (they visit the site on a daily basis checking for new uploads, and yet have never once contributed anything to the forum or anywhere else.)  I always want to scream "80MB isn't adequate for a 250 page magazine, what are you - crazy??!!"  but it wouldn't do any good because to them, a mag that's 300dpi is a waste of space.  It upsets me so much that I've taken Famitsu off my scan pile and am gonna focus on mags covering PC/Nintendo/Playstation games, since they only seem to take mags that feature Sega-related content.  So like I said, I totally understand where you're coming from regarding the integrity of your work.  I won't even ask that you upload stuff here anymore if it means compromising the work (and if I choose to resize any of your stuff rest assured it will be for my personal use only).

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Oh, it's totally fine! I recognize people want to read in a variety of sizes and formats, and part of the reason of starting with a hi-res scan is to make it easier to accommodate everyone.

 

I'm uploading some more CD-ROM magazines. This is my first upload that includes JPEGs with embedded color correction profiles made from my flatbed.

 

https://archive.org/details/BlenderVol33

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Oh, it's totally fine! I recognize people want to read in a variety of sizes and formats, and part of the reason of starting with a hi-res scan is to make it easier to accommodate everyone.

 

I'm uploading some more CD-ROM magazines. This is my first upload that includes JPEGs with embedded color correction profiles made from my flatbed.

 

https://archive.org/details/BlenderVol33

 

Well, just a heads up.  I suppose it might look fine if I actually downloaded it, but this is all I see on archive.org via Firefox:

Picture1.png

 

That could scare away potential downloaders, eh?

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  • Retromags Curator

Well, just a heads up.  I suppose it might look fine if I actually downloaded it, but this is all I see on archive.org via Firefox:

Picture1.png

 

That could scare away potential downloaders, eh?

 

How strange...I see the image as normal both on Firefox and Chrome. Maybe they corrected it? :)

 

*huggles*

Areala

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Ouch, harsh words.  Not harsh enough to make me feel like switching from Firefox, but I can tell you're not a fan, huh? :lol:

Dunno that it's completely fair to be so critical of people using software that doesn't account for color correction, though.  That's not the sort of thing 99% of users are even aware of, so I doubt they'd even suspect it could be a problem with their browser, especially since it's extremely unlikely they've ever encountered a similar problem before.  (The only time in 20 years of internet use that I've ever seen a pic like this other than this one was the time you uploaded that color-corrected Tomb Raider pic.)

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Sometimes the truth is harsh. :P You don't often see web images with color profiles because for a long time there's been a commonly accepted web standard of the sRGB color space, but that's changing now that wider gamut displays are more common. Having a color profile is future proofing the image for new displays. Converting to sRGB does not provide the same results. If Firefox needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, so be it.

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