VGBounceHouse work-in-progress

[VGBounceHouse]

Howdy!

In addition to the two new magazines I've been working on (see Vidiot and PCAccelerator topics) I'm also working on a number of regular magazines. The following have all been scanned and I'm in the progress of editing. I hope to have most of these done this week.

From December 1982:

Electronic Fun with Computers & Games (Issue 2)

Electronic Games (Issue 10)

Video Games (Issue 3)

Videogaming Illustrated (Issue 3)

I have an additional December 1982 magazine arriving in the mail hopefully this week.

I also have these not from December 1982 fully scanned:

Video Games, Issue 18, March 1984

Video Games, Issue 19, April 1984

Electronic Games, Issue 25, May 1984

Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 65, December 1994

And one last one which I guess is currently in the "not allowed" situation:

Electronic Gaming Monthly, Issue 136, November 2000

As always these were scanned at 600dpi on an Epson WorkForce WF-7610. For the stapled issues they were debound and scanned using facing pages. For the perfect-bound magazines they were massaged at the binding and then page-by-page removed. I have found this method necessary to create near-seamless facing-page ad reconstructions as advertising is the focus of my work.

As I complete these I will update with links to my 300dpi archives.

Chris

[Sean697]

Thank you. I have EGM 65 coming in the mail. I wasn't looking forward to scanning that behemoth. This is all great. Can't wait to see how they come out.

[VGBounceHouse]

Hey Sean697,

It was truly a beast, I already have all of the ads edited and will get to the rest of the magazine this weekend at the latest. I'm taking it easy on myself finishing up the 1982 magazine first lol

Chris

[VGBounceHouse]

Howdy!

Just wanted to pass along the first semi-completed magazine from this batch:

http://vgpavilion.com/mags/1982/12/vg/

As usual there is no color correction. Despite obvious fading the issue for color correction here is that the true photos such as the one on page 23 look nearly identical holding the page up to the monitor. I'm happy to do a correction but finding the mid-range is always a problem for me.

The other concern is fold-outs and facing pages. Many magazines have fold-outs, this one is odd in that they are actually part of the standard numbering scheme. If you look at the cover you can see the break where the cover is actually not full-width. I included the overlap in the image, which is Page 1. Page 2, the inner-flap cover, doesn't have that option as folding the page open doesn't leave another page to cover the rest of the surface. In this temporary archive I have cropped pages 2, 3 and 4 to be the appropriate widths. Because Page 4 is designed to serve as a facing page to 5 none of these pages are identical in width.

I bring these concerns up because some people seem to ensure pages line up if facing pages are turned on in a viewer. How do I reconcile this?

This brings up the case of facing pages in general. One of the problems with older, non-typeset stapled mags in the printing, while rarely consistent, sometimes made assumptions about the page overlap when reading the standard stapled magazine. If you look at the web page I linked above you'll see a nicely assembled ColecoVision ad. If you look in the archive you'll notice the laft page has a gap to the right. When holding the magazine in your hands things look fine because the bend joins the pages together and covers up the gap. Editing the pages together lines the two halves up perfectly with the gap removed. This creates a two-page layout not equal in width to two normal-sized pages.

Just wondering about people's thoughts on these issues.

Chris

[Sean697]

I'm kind of curious on this myself. Currently I'm just doing 2 page spreads as one page each. I believe the guidance on posters etc is make a single scan. But I was considering making an extra page with the two pages combined in a single image. If like to hear some feedback on that as well.

[marktrade]

Wow, this is great! Thank you for all this.

The ColecoVision ad you edited together looks especially nice. I think it would be nice if it looked like that in the readable archive. If in your opinion as an archivist that gap should be preserved as a resource for people to see how it was actually printed, it might be better to have it as an extra. Otherwise I don't think that's of interest to readers, or at least I've never heard a reader say, "I like that." They're more likely to appreciate the extra work you did in editing it. It looks nice!

As for cover fold-outs, this is how I treat them: As I open the cover, what I see as the immediate left face is first, the immediate right face is second, then as I fold out the cover the revealed faces are treated in order left to right as third and fourth pages respectively. The simplest cover fold-outs are designed to create a two-stage experience, what you see first and then what you reveal. So "what you see first" should be the first two pages in the archive after the cover. "What you reveal" are the two pages after that. At least how I treat them and they seem very consistent.

The PC Accelerator issues I'm editing and uploading right now have both front and back cover foldouts. The back cover fold outs are treated the same way, what you see followed by what you reveal. When you open the CBR files and read them with facing pages, you can't even tell there was a foldout, because all the text and art on the facing pages go together as coherent experiences.

Looking at your archive I can tell what those coherent experiences should've been. Let's say the current way you've ordered the first four pages after the cover are A, B, C, D. I would re-order them as A, D, B, C. That would connect the text and art of the most relevant facing pages. In this case the relevant facing pages are easier to see because of their common backgrounds. The "what you see" pages have a black background and the "what you reveal" pages have a white background. This also keeps the inner fold spread intact so that you don't have to display it as an extra outside the archive.

Someday we'll have hi-res VR that recreates brilliant 3D cover fold-outs and all the content is still there for when that day comes but until then I use this method to pair relevant pages.

What really drives me crazy are half-page "perfume foldouts" like the kind in fashion magazines that are scented. I had to deal with one of those in an issue of GMR (unscented of course, but just as unwieldy).

[VGBounceHouse]

Thanks for that marktrade, and in general I that's what I had been thinking except for deciding which (if any) spreads to include in the .cbr file.

Here's the "weirdness" in this one though that maybe you and Sean697 have seen and what makes assemblage of the archive difficult, in addition to deciding how to build the spreads. I put together some partially healed versions with overlays to help work out this (and other similar instances) so please disregard the not-fully-healed assemblage.

In this issue if you were to open the cover you get this facing page combination:

Notice how Page 2 doesn't fully cover Page 4, and that the underlying image doesn't fully line up though it does with Page 5.

Opening Page 2 to reveal Pages 3 and 4 gives us what could be seen as a complete facing pages spread:

But if you read the words and notice the console clipping you see the full three page spread is really needed:

Here the console now lines up properly.

Please refer to my original link http://vgpavilion.com/mags/1982/12/vg/ to get the 300dpi versions though as I said I did minimal gap repair.

So how would this work in the archive (much less the assemblages I saw you make at archive.org marktrade)? Cover, then Pages 2 and 5, then Pages 3, 4 and 5? Would you include the individual pages as well? What impact does this have on people using standard .cbr reader software?

I'm assuming the individual pages really have no value in this situation yet all the archives I've seen always include the individual pages even when they make so sense when reading in single page view.

Chris

[Sean697]

Wow that ad is pretty awesome actually.

[Sean697]

Here's how I would do it. Open the cover and the black images page 2,3. The whit ones 4,5. Then I'd insert the 2.3 spread as page 3a. Then the three page spread as page 5a. And forget about having a 4,5 spread page by itself as you have the 3 page image.

So reading you'd get page 2,3,3a,4,5,5a.

[marktrade]

I appreciate your saving the three-page spread and presenting it in a way that shows how it appeared, especially for an older magazine. This one is unique because not only does the art connect but the text within the foldout makes a specific spatial reference to content outside the foldout. It refers to the word jumble "above" the Atari VCS unit. Most foldouts I've seen don't make spatial references like that.

So rethinking this case, I might go for this order: cover, page 2, page 5, then a single image for the three-page spread. Otherwise I would disregard the three-page spread or make it the penultimate image in the archive (just before the back cover, which is where I put any "extras" that don't fit anywhere else, like that perfume-style foldout I had in GMR).

When my CBR software detects a large page that cannot fit on screen with the page after it, it will just display that single image, and then proceed showing two pages at a time after that.

There's another interesting case I can think of, EGM 53. The very front of the cover itself had a "double door" style foldout on the outside, instead of an inside foldout. The scan of the cover with the "doors open" was just a single image despite having a double-page width, and it didn't mess with the page presentation in my CBR reader at all.

The alignment between page 2 and 5 does not concern me because alignments between pages are almost never going to be perfect. When they do come out perfect I see it as a very pleasant surprise, but I don't expect it. Very often the content just isn't there.

[VGBounceHouse]

Thanks for the great feedback guys, I'm gonna make a few finalized combinations to see how it turns out. I really haven't dabbled much with CBZ/CBR readers but the functionality in the few I've tried on PC and iPad have been inconsistent. I'm hoping if you can run the samples through your own favorite readers we can come to a consensus.

In the meantime I did some edits to pages 18, 19, 32, 33, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48 and 49 to ensure better facing pages functionality. I think they work great especially here:

but in this one

there is a printing error that introduces purple into about four inches high by half an inch wide area near the middle. It's definitely not a scanning or aging error as I can see the same thing when holding the stapled issue, and since it doesn't run the height of the page I can only assume there was a smudge on the plate.

I could "repair" this printing error but it would take a fair amount of work to normalize the colors. Is this something anyone ever does?

It's getting late here so I'm calling it a night. I will prepare three alternate CBRs tomorrow and update the thread and hopefully we can decide on a final version. Then I'm off to do the December 1982 Electronic Games next as it's both the largest of these four December 1982 magazines and the one I've made the most progress on since I finalize the ads first.

Chris

[VGBounceHouse]

Oh, I forgot to mention I updated

http://vgpavilion.com/mags/1982/12/vg/

with those spreads in 300dpi.

I also added a text-searchable PDF version. I didn't convert the table of contents or any of the ads but otherwise things look the same as when you browse the image version.

Now for some sleep lol

Chris

[marktrade]

I could "repair" this printing error but it would take a fair amount of work to normalize the colors. Is this something anyone ever does?

No, you'll encounter a lot more printing errors like that, colors or tones looking off in the middle of the page on double-page ads. I don't worry about it.

[Sean697]

Some CBR readers offer a two page view. Some only single page.

Are you guys submitting the final version of your mags to get uploads to the site? And get front page announcements? Because you should.

[VGBounceHouse]

Ok, couldn't sleep, so I put together an alternate archive. After page two I have two and five merged, and following four I have three, four and five merged. See if that flow works and if not what changes should be made. The direct download to the alternate CBR is http://vgpavilion.com/mags/1982/12/vg/Video-Games-Issue-003-Dec-1982-alt.cbr

Yes Sean697 I do want to submit both this and the Vidiot issue I linked earlier. I full support RetroMags' mission which is why I donated to the server fund back when I first joined. As a newbie however I'm taking it slow to learn what I'm doing right and wrong so I can go on my merry way and stop bothering you guys in the future lol

I hope to take care of some Levels examples tomorrow as well as some of the other guide steps. After I put up some side-by-side comparisons (or splitter-drag images) I'm hoping there'll be a consensus on the version to go with, and I will use the same settings for future scans and just do announcements when I have submitted clean archives.

Chris

[marktrade]

Ok, couldn't sleep, so I put together an alternate archive. After page two I have two and five merged, and following four I have three, four and five merged. See if that flow works and if not what changes should be made. The direct download to the alternate CBR is http://vgpavilion.com/mags/1982/12/vg/Video-Games-Issue-003-Dec-1982-alt.cbr

I think this is an improvement but more awkward than what I suggested. With the joined pages added as single images, the split page images seem very superfluous and end up offsetting the page displays for the rest of the issue (left pages appear on the right and vice versa).

I guess it's a small criticism, as all the content is there and it's easily fixed on the reader's end by switching to single page view and then back to double page view. I don't think anyone else would say anything, appreciative they just had something. I once uploaded an issue with half its pages missing and no one said anything.

One more thing, the file size might be an issue for others. It's definitely not an issue for me, as I read on a computer with a large TV, but when I first started in the Spring I was advised to keep the file size below 400 mb and compress at JPG level 9 because some tablets can't process anything above that very well. Although technology is always changing and it's just a matter of time before larger file sizes are more acceptable.

My manual uploads to Retromags are restricted to 200 MB. I haven't tried to meet that file size yet. I would think that limit is unacceptable for PC Accelerator's small text but Retromags doesn't have a section for PC Accelerator anyways, so those are going to archive.org and OldGameMags. I look forward to when Retromags has sections for some of the currently missing mags and they let me upload files larger than 200 MB. Until I'm very happy to add my archive.org links and update the status of magazines in the database. Even though the database is incomplete, it's still quite large and very very useful.

[VGBounceHouse]

Hey marktrade,

I will follow the guide and reduce images to a maximum of 1600 pixels wide for the Retromags version.

I have done some sample levels/brightness/sharpen pages. If you scroll down to the bottom of http://vgpavilion.com/mags/1982/12/vg/ you'll find a split-image viewer with my initial version on the left and the adjusted version on the right. There's a button in the upper left that let's you go full screen. These images have been scaled down to 195dpi to meet the 1600px or less width requirement. I like my fancier viewer but here's a quick side-by-side of one of the eight samples I did:

The colors don't seem distorted but the change does emphasize the yellowing of the pages on the edges.

What does everyone else think of the page redundancies marktrade mentioned regarding the alternate archive?

Once I get some feedback on whether to go with the original, altered or get advice on other levels/brightness adjustments I will implement all the changes and create a new archive to submit to RetroMags.

Chris

[marktrade]

I was advised by kiwiarcader and E-day to have a consistent height rather than width and that has worked out well for me. Also I was asked to make sure the dpi setting for the file is 300, regardless of pixel dimensions. This affects how the file is treated by some programs, particularly Adobe for when someone wants to convert to PDF. I'm not sure which guide you are referring to.

That's a REALLY awesome split image viewer you linked to. I've never seen that before.

I personally never mess with brightness or contrast settings. My scanning software lets me set the white point while scanning. I just keep it at the default level of 231 and it hasn't failed me yet. This eliminates moderate yellowing as well as bleed-thru from dark images on the other side of the page. Although I'm not sure exactly how my software does it, I believe the same thing can be done manually in Photoshop through the curves command.

Here is a quick edit I did of your image using a curves adjustment layer.

I basically followed this short tutorial:

It involves using a threshold layer to view the image's histogram, so you can get a feel for just how far away the parts of the image that should be black are away from actual black, and likewise for white, although when you're dealing with a document with black-on-white text, then you're not always going to have to go through that step. Just make a curves adjustment layer and set the white and black points and see what works.

I set the white point somewhere on the high end of the yellowing, but not to the extreme, just enough that most of it went away. That changes the "tone" of the image considerably, enough that I wonder if the page was ever meant to look that white in the first place. Maybe it was supposed to look slightly warm or textured like recycled paper. Electronic Entertainment has paper that's kind of like that, but it's so subtle it's lost when transferred to pixels.

Certainly it's up to you and what you think.

[Sean697]

I used a similar guide. But it reccomend a reducing your absolute RGB values by 10 each from 0 to 10 and 255 to 245. This actually helped my Images a lot from getting too white and kept shadow details. I think the color in his corrected scan is probrably correct to how the page looks for an older magazine. Maybe the best point lies in between. I think ultimately you decide what looks best I suppose.

[VGBounceHouse]

There's a discussion over in my Vidiot thread about an updated guide and using height as the resize point. I hope to clarify the dpi issue over there as well.

In regard to additional edits to this magazine I appreciate the video and already had experimented with a variety of techniques. The paper is most definitely not pure white and does have a grain under a magnifying glass which is why I'm getting a pretty detailed look at 600dpi. Based on a number of articles the only way to deal with this "creep yellowing" (starting on the outside in intesity rather than being even after more time) is manual touch-up as any technique will blow out colors in overriding the unevenness of the effect. One of the methods would add a few minutes to pages with a whiteish border, but when images go to the edges we're talking a half-hour or more per page, and it will only approximate what the un-yellowed portion really looked like and possibly destroy some details. For now I'd rather move on to other magazines and either revisit the issue sometime in the future or leave it to someone else who would like to work from either my sources or the edited 600dpi PSDs I can provide.

As for the slider marktrade, I experimented with a number of free ones before deciding I liked the ease of setup, support for multiple images in a slider gallery and the fullscreen option of this:

http://codecanyon.net/item/html-beforeafter-viewer-jquery-plugin/153778

Since my site is custom code I went with that version but there's a WordPress version as well for anyone interested in the same functionality on that platform.

[VGBounceHouse]

I have finished with Video Games Issue 3 December 1982 and updated the database page with a link to the archive

http://www.retromags.com/magazines/category/usa/video-games/video-games-issue-3#.VgrWuvlVhBc

I have left in the page 2/5 and 3/4/5 spreads but otherwise the only changes were to downsample first to 300dpi then 2200px tall and save at JPG 9. This resulted in an archive size of 88.5MB.

I asked about posting the release in the new releases forum in my Vidiot thread and will follow whatever instructions given as an answer in either.

[E-Day]

You can copy one of the new release posts already up and just change everything that is relevant. That is what I still do.

[marktrade]

You can copy one of the new release posts already up and just change everything that is relevant. That is what I still do.

If we post in the New Releases forum, will it appear on the front page of the site?

[Sean697]

If we post in the New Releases forum, will it appear on the front page of the site?

Yes, after an administrator approves it.

[E-Day]

Hey VG, your two scans are now officially on the site. If you want ot create a New Release post for them, go ahead. If not, I can do it tomorrow night.