gingerbeardman

I'm wondering if anybody has calibrated their scanner output? Using a Q60/IT8 Colour Calibration Target? I can only find one mention of the process: So I'm thinking it's not really common. I've sent an email to Wolf at coloraid.de who sells the most affordable targets.

I also used one more tool: JPEGmini - the does some high tech optimisation of JPG images to reduce filesize in a way that it's not possible to see any visual differences. My workflow here was: Save as JPEG 99% (Retrobatch; full auto) JPEG mini (full auto) This reduced total filesize by around 35%. The only thing to note is that if these JPGs are edited and resaved with another tool, the file size is likely to increase dramatically as other tools don't do as good a job when saving.

Cheers! I have not seen any other issues in the wild, so thought it worth preserving.

Indeed. The deskew/straighten tool is a real time saver. I only had to redo one spread from each issue of Electric Brain because there were so many slanted boxes on the page it seemed to confuse the algorithm. It's possible I could tweak the settings, but time was better spent doing those pages manually. Cropping edges, yes quite a ball-ache. I have two crops saved in Acorn: Left Aligned Scan & Right Aligned Scan. Depending the orientation in which I feed the pages into the scanner (I was quite inconsistent this time) the scans come out either left aligned or right aligned. The saved crops get me 95% of the way to the exact crop, some minor cursor key action and press return to accept, then save it, close it, and next! Acorn has a great crop mode where saved crops, cursor key adjustment, mouse rotation, ruler guides are all accessible at the same time, resulting in a very fast workflow. Anyway, here is an update with a first pass to get opinion and feedback: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ygacekc82akv0/ (3 x 33MB cbz) I have done no retouching or color work on these, they are simply passed through my tools: straighten (full auto) crop (assisted manual; some manual adjustment and rotation in rare cases) split (full auto) resize and convert to JPG (full auto) zip (full auto) rename and upload (manual) Thoughts appreciated! My first serious scan, please be gentle matt

Good question! Basically to automate as much grunt work as possible, where it's possible the computer can do the work and, most importantly, not get it wrong. These are all Mac-only apps, except deskew. Deskew (aka Straighten) Straightening images. Drag on a bunch of scans and have them automatically "deskewed" or straightened. Uses open-source command line deskew which is available for Mac/Win/Linux https://www.macworld.co.uk/download/system-desktop-tools/deskew-14-3330895/ I put a drag-and-drop GUI round it because I arrived at some settings that work pretty much all the time. Here is a sample of before/after the automatic deskew/straighten of my TIFF scan. Split Vertical Wrapper for imagemagik command line convert crop, so I can split double page spreads down the middle. Drag on a bunch of images, get a set of new images for left/right pages, automatically renumbered to be correct order. I put a drag-and-drop GUI round it to avoid the command line, and the renumbering is my own work. Edit: it just occurred to me I can do this in my Retrobatch workflow. Acorn - lightweight alternative to Photoshop I use it in preference to Photoshop because it loads instantly and I find it so much quicker to use. I only use Photoshop rarely, if there's something Acorn cannot do. Very rarely. Retrobatch - workflow oriented batch image processing I am using it for resizing, converting to JPG and setting DPI. Made by the same company as Acorn. Amazing app!

Scanning - complete Fujitsu fi-4530C VueScan 9 Processing - in progress RetroBatch Acorn Photoshop Split Vertical (my own tool) Deskew (my own tool)

Electric Brain #33, April 1993 #34, May 1993 #35, June 1993

I use https://letsencrypt.org for my SSL certificates, they are free. If that can help reduce the ongoing retromags costs, even by a small margin, then great

This was initially hand-made but eventually it became quite popular and had a proper print run with ISSN codes, published by Space City Publishing (London), and widely distributed in game stores and newsagents around the UK. It still had the fanzine aesthetic, similar to Japanese magazines of the time like Famitsu, Gamest, Beep etc, as it was printed on newspaper style paper rather than high grade paper like EDGE might have been. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Brain I have three issues—33, 34 and 35—previously scanned on a cheap flatbed and uploaded to archive.org Since then I bought a Fujitsu fi-4530C and took out the staples to scan the issue again, and the results are infinitely better: http://www.mediafire.com/folder/ygacekc82akv0/Electric_Brain (3 x ~35MB cbz) The name of the magazine and country of origin. ELECTRIC BRAIN (UK) https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/0968-8471# How many issues of this magazine exist? 35 What are the dates of each issue? April 1989 – June 1993 source: issue 33 page 3; other photos I found this additional information: PC Engine Fanatics: 1 to 8 Console Ma'zine: 9 to 19 Electric Brain: 20 to 35 This is my first submission so please be gentle. Cheers, matt

This would work well, especially if it is tied in to the user profile for some sort of feedback/rating system.

Gorgeous cover. Great scan

I'm still looking for these. Any ideas?

I've got my A3 scanner, an fi-4530C and initial scan tests are good! @Trickster go ahead and order also PM me for my addresscheers

Before we hook after and order (me a used A3 scanner; you the magazines) are you sure the issues you're after are not already scanned? https://archive.org/search.php?query=Amiga+user+international&sort=-date https://archive.org/details/amigauserinternational http://kiwis.world/index.php/component/jdownloads/category/88-amiga-user-international

Let's see how I get on with my Electric Brain rescan.

I can find some of the issues I'm after on https://www.suruga-ya.jp - prices range from 950 to 1480 - but I wondered if there are other better options? Friends of mine are heading to Tokyo in a couple of weeks and I'd like to get the magazines delivered to their B&B address when they are there. Of course I can let this opportunity pass by and wait to play the Y! Auctions waiting game... Thoughts?

I bought a FUJITSU ScanSnap S1300i on Shpock today for £20+delivery (I organised collect+ for £10) which I think is a pretty good price. So really I have a few options now. @Trickster do you know, or can you find out, the dimensions of an issue of Amiga User International? Then I can figure out logistics and make a proposal/commit to the scanning!

Because we're British. That's the answer to so many questions.

Hahahah! Understood. I'm intending to get a used feed- through scanner soon.

Ah, yes you're correct. My quick glance at the review excerpt shows that it's not the same as the one in the preview. Oops, sorry.

Sure, the scans above where done on my HP flatbed scanner. I generally only do camera work when I'm doing pure OCR (ebooks)

Seems to be issue 295? Please confirm my deduction using the information below. Here's the Famitsu page for Coca-Cola Kid: https://www.famitsu.com/cominy/?m=pc&a=page_h_title&title_id=16013 It shows an excerpt of the review which can be matched to the image in the twitter post. Issue 298 was 1994-09-02 https://yomuka.wordpress.com/tag/weekly-famitsu/ So issue 295 would have been on 1994-08-12 http://sayonarafamitsu.blog.fc2.com/blog-date-199408.html That is the week after Coca-Cola Kid was released. https://www.suruga-ya.jp/product/detail/ZNON8053 (none in stock)

I see 10 auctions right now for 1994 issues http://buyee.jp/item/search/query/ファミコン通信 1994?translationType=1

These are some scans I previously did: https://archive.org/details/Electric-Brain

Sure thing, let me know where I can read about quality guidelines.