Topic: Scanning tips for old guides?

[Dracul]

I recently bought a guide on ebay of Rondo of Blood for the PC Engine version, the guide is over 10 years old and the pages are starting to fade... its in japanese, but i'm worried to scan it cause the type of paper you see on old comics non glossy, afraid it will rip or fall apart, any ideas?

I will scan the cover soon and add it here soon eitherway.

[CapComMDb]

Hey, glad to see you're interested in scanning a historical guide! The thing to remember is that you want your images scanned at relatively high quality - 300dpi is going to be archival in terms of resolution, even though this is going to take awhile to scan each page (but you'll be glad you did it 10 years down the road). I'd also recommend getting a fairly good scanner if you don't have one already. If the guide is fading, you may also have to do image restoration (or have someone else do it). For this reason, you'll want to back up those original 300dpi scans to a DVD or something (remember, space is cheap as DVDs are only like 20c) as well as copies of the restored images.

The biggest concern you'll have beyond that point though is getting the scans without damaging the book. This isn't something you can just flatten willy-nilly (or heaven forbid, cut pages out); you've got to be careful that you don't flatten the spine out as you do it, as that would ruin the guide. However, it's a fine line because you want the images as flat as possible, and depending on the binding, that can be difficult if not impossible to do...

I'd recommend testing out a few magazines first that you don't care too much about in order to get a feel for it. There may be other tricks out there too that I don't know about; I'm honestly not an expert scanner (even if I know people who are really good at it).

UPDATE: Here's what he has to say:

"Get a good scanner (Epson, Cannon). Scan at least 300DPI. Have a decent scan bed size something at least 9x12 (mine is sadly too small for some things,but is great for most things and is a 9x12.) Make sure that you make previews of the image you are scanning and draw a marquee around the image you want to scan (some things look better scanned in Photo VS Document so play around with the setting and see what looks more accurate to your original source).

Also check to make sure the colors on your preview image closely match the colors on your actual source. If the Image is faded try to play with the contrast and brightness and see if you can try color restoration if your scanner supports it.

If you have a spine there are various ways try it. If your whole book fits on the scanning bed you can flatten it on there or scan a page at a time if doesn't fit and you can edit the pages together. If you get darkness near the spine you can either edit it or delete it because there is not much else you can do about it unless you despine your book (The next best thing would be to photograph the spread).

When you are satisfied with your image save it as a lossless (PNG, TIFF) for archival purposes and make multiple backups of your good lossless image then you can save it as a jpg. If you are thinking about making a book type file out of it CBR is the best choice VS PDF and try to put single pages in the book because spreads make the previewing process slow.

It also helps if you have a good quality monitor and a program like Photoshop [or The Gimp]. Also remember that some things that look great on a monitor can look like crap when you print it out. Also make sure you completely square the image using the ruler tool in Photoshop and edit stuff like creases and junk out. Do not watermark your original images [as then the images are not archival - you can use a program like Adobe Bridge to add source information to the metadata instead].

Yes this takes a long time, but if you have a good scanner and patience you will prevail."