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[rez]

Being new to scanning with only a few under my belt

I got to wondering what average length of time is involved when you all are scanning a book from paper, speaking of say a 32pager including the covers.

Say just the average time involved from start to the final making into a zip.

Or is that too hard to say seeing you are doing other things which leaves the scanning alone for lengths of time until you get to it?

Cheers

[JonTheScanner]

This depends a lot.  If I have a very good, clean comic with whitish pages and I'm using my fast scanner, and I'm only scanning (or scanning and watching TV), I could do a book in less than 20 minutes (on my fast scanner).  This assumes that the editing I want to do on each page is very similar to all other pages so Ctl-F in Image Ready will repeat the last adjustment.  It would take more like 40 minutes on my slower scanner as I'd have to wait for the scanner to finish before I could edit teh next page.

It takes essentially no time to zip the file.

[cimmerian32]

Average time per scan...  1 hour

Average time per edit...  20 hours

Scanning is monkey work...  it's the edits and attention to detail and an overweening sense of perfectionism that keeps my output so low...  I just can't seem to bring myself to release a book that's not completely clean, i.e. all creases and color loss removed or replaced, all missing areas filled in, and all the colors as true as I can make them...  is there a stronger word for obsession?

Cimm

[rez]

I can understand that. Sounds like a work of art.
Good stuff.

Average time per scan...  1 hour

Average time per edit...  20 hours

Scanning is monkey work...  it's the edits and attention to detail and an overweening sense of perfectionism that keeps my output so low...  I just can't seem to bring myself to release a book that's not completely clean, i.e. all creases and color loss removed or replaced, all missing areas filled in, and all the colors as true as I can make them...  is there a stronger word for obsession?

Cimm

[Yoc]

Yep, Cimm is one of the best Rez! 
He and a few others out there as well are truly devoted to producing absolutely the best scans possible.  Above and beyond what the average reader would expect.  He's taken my breath away with some pages.
If you'd like to check out some of his scans do a search on the site for 'cimm' and you'll see his books posted under that name or uploaded using his 'Joshua' name. 
You might also search for books scanned by Rammercrammer who is another of the top quality scanners and also a member here. 

-Yoc

[rez]

Thanks yoc, I'll check those out sometime.

I'm scanning pages now for the Danger is our Business No1 which should be arriving tommorrow.
Doing an average I'm getting around 3 1/2 minutes per page if there are no complications. (heh heh no complications ya right )

That's the basic preview, crop, scan and save. Then resizing to fit the page, the impartations placed within the pages of this sites title and scanner name and the data/title page takes a bit more time and then the zip file so it's probably a minimum best of 2 1/2hours per 32pager.

I can see where to really make a pretty boy scan it would take quite a bit of finesse to pull off a quality piece just seeing the raw material in these old books that one has to deal with.

Just looking at the paper tone discoloring is enough for concerns let alone the idea of trying to crop a page to present a reasonable squareness when the papercutting techniques from back then left much to be desired if even expecting a 90degree alignment with the page edges and the panels page after page when after awhile you are glad to discover even one. snorK*

And the books themselves aren't always found to be at 90degrees on all four corners so that really presents a situation to put the thinking cap on.

I would imagine that there are computer techniques available that would permit the realignment by degrees of a scanned page

so regardless of the misaligned print on the paper and the +-90degree corners, a scan could be cropped to perfect alignment with the panels in effect making a better presentation than the original copy... in that view of things.

Seems the real touch would be finding the right balance with each book depending on the severity of the aging and abuse each has incurred.

Looks to be very challenging. Sounds like the more tools available the better production. A lot more to it than this simple scanning of whatever is before you and hiding under the banner of 'Liking a raw untouched copy' because of the time it takes to produce a scan and not wanting to add any more to it than you already have.
EEK! Did I just say that?

[Yoc]

That sounds about right Rez.
My scanner is very slow especially at higher resolutions.  I think it takes about the same time as yours per a page.  My HP Scanjet also has an auto straighten feature that helps to some degree.  I save in TIFF format then open them in Adobe Photoshop 6 where I do any colour correction, etc including page cropping if needed.
There are two schools of thought on scan tweaking.  One says keep it looking as close to the original book as is possible.  Even if it's school bus yellow or damaged leave it alone.  The other school would like to see the book as close to the original printing as possible.  So very yellow books are colour corrected to reduce it.  But it's a fine line that can lead to bleaching if over done.
And then you can toss in some who would rather that there be no ads scanned vs those that want the cover to cover experience.  I believe the majority of scans on the site are cover to cover.  I've always thought if easy to delete them if a reader doesn't want them so better to include them in any scans.

Thanks for sharing your gems here on GAC!
-Yoc

[rez]

I have to say that even 2 1/2 hrs is quite underestimated on the total time from sitdown to the upload to FTP.
But hey, let's think positive here.

[octal]

Cover to cover is always best since an individual downloader can always remove unwanted pages.

As to scanning styles, personally, I prefer the natural look, but edits are OK as long as they are not overdone. I've seen a few scans where the edits resulted in garish, fluorescent colors and  whites that where disturbingly bleached. In those cases it would be nice to have a companion natural version.

But, I realize this is an individual thing and I throw no stones since the bottom line is that whoever is doing the scanning has the right to do what they please!

octal