[Yoc]

Thanks Eric!
:

[Yoc]

Thanks Eric!

[OtherEric]

Staying on Target:

Volume 9, number 5 now ready for download.  Enjoy!

And looking ahead a couple books, can anybody with better search-fu than I find a good scan of the cover for Target comics Volume 8, number 12?  The best I could locate is the one on the GCD; Heritage appears not to have one.

[OtherEric]

Target Comics V8 09 ready for download.  As always, enjoy!

[Yoc]

Thanks Eric!

[OtherEric]

Target comics v9 01 ready for download!

L B Cole sure did some neat covers, didn't he?

[OtherEric]

And, shifting gears a bit:

GI Joe v5 41 from Ziff Davis ready for download.  JVJ didn't send a card for any of the GI Joes.  Enjoy!

[JonTheScanner]

Eric,

Thanks for the GI Joe.  It was one of the titles I had intended to ask JVJ for at some point.  Did you by any chance get #26 (we need 3 of the four covers), 28 (we need all ad pages), 37 (we need 3 of the four covers), 44 47 49  (we need all ad pages for all 3).

[OtherEric]

I only grabbed complete missing issues; I've got 42, 46, and 51 next on my list.

[rez]

Great scanning work there! What technics are you using?
\

Target comics v9 01 ready for download!

L B Cole sure did some neat covers, didn't he?

[OtherEric]

Well, I start by scanning the book.  No real trick there, other than I may put a weight on top of the scanner cover.  If it's my book rather than JVJ's, I might be willing to further damage a book to get a better scan.  (I've been known to pull staples on my books on occasion, for example.)  Depending on the condition of the cover, I may go check heritage for a better scan.  A nice cover scan can go a LONG way in making a scan of a low grade book look better; first impressions do matter.  For editing, which I can either do page by page while scanning or later depending on my mood (I've got several books still to edit), I start by making sure the page is correctly oriented if need be since half the scans will be upside down.  I'll then check to make sure I don't need to rescan due to a blurry area or other problem.  I don't need to do that often, but I won't hesitate to do that if I think it will help.  (Sometimes you just need to go ahead and live with it, generally the thicker the book the more you'll need to put up with.  And I'm much less likely to bother with ads or text pages, honestly.)  I then, if needed, rotate the page ONCE to straighten it using irfanview.  If I'm not happy with the first rotation, I'll reload the page and retry until I am. If the page is damaged in someway I can repair, I may do so.  My skills there are VERY limited; I'm normally restricted to just working on the page border, but this can make a big difference when you auto level a couple steps later.  Then I trim so there's only a small border around the art.  (I know not everybody likes that, but I personally think it looks best.  And it helps unify the pages if you need to rotate some of them, which you almost always do.)  I'll then save the scan, still as a TIFF, to a new folder with whatever I want the final name to be.  (Normally just the number.)  Once the book is all done, I'll fire up photoshop elements.  Normally all I do there is batch process to auto level, resize the scans if needed, and convert to JPEG; I can get a bit more advanced on really dark scans.  Then I zip it up, rename the zip, check for errors, and post away.  I don't know that my results are that spectacular, but I do know my end results are definitely improving from my earlier ones.

That answer your question about techniques, Rez?

Oh, and GI Joe v5 42 ready to go.  Enjoy!

[rez]

That answer your question about techniques, Rez?

yes, pretty much. I'm of a limited skills set myself. Normally when I'm scanning I try to visualize the panel edge when placing on the screen for the scan as a goodly percentage of the time that will eliminate the need for the rotation step. I do the same as you when needing the rotation by reopening the page each time until it comes out right.

Secondly I go to paint to clear up any inconsistancies in the margins or major blemishes on the page via copy/pastes and then save to tiff. (Thanking JVJ for that tidbit of info that helps keep the scans sharper.)

I then use the auto crop feature in irfanview but is problematic in that it will not process a tiff so I save to jpeg so it will function and then open the new crop and resize, sharpen and enhance.

Somehow it seems that the added step to change to jpeg for the auto crop could be altered or eliminated in some way so as not to lose any clarity by the extra changing to the jpeg.

I had experimented a bit with the batch feature but I haven't been scanning enough to warrant getting the technique down

and resizing at the same time as sharpening and enhancement let's me custom tailor things a bit per page if needed.

Same as checking out some of the other tools available in the various other programs. Allot there but the learning curve right now seems a bit heavy for my present involvement in that it seems I can present what I view as a halfway decent scan with my meager tools that gets the job done without relearning a whole new set of processes,...but maybe sometime...: o)

Well, I start by scanning the book.  No real trick there, other than I may put a weight on top of the scanner cover.  If it's my book rather than JVJ's, I might be willing to further damage a book to get a better scan.  (I've been known to pull staples on my books on occasion, for example.)  Depending on the condition of the cover, I may go check heritage for a better scan.  A nice cover scan can go a LONG way in making a scan of a low grade book look better; first impressions do matter.  For editing, which I can either do page by page while scanning or later depending on my mood (I've got several books still to edit), I start by making sure the page is correctly oriented if need be since half the scans will be upside down.  I'll then check to make sure I don't need to rescan due to a blurry area or other problem.  I don't need to do that often, but I won't hesitate to do that if I think it will help.  (Sometimes you just need to go ahead and live with it, generally the thicker the book the more you'll need to put up with.  And I'm much less likely to bother with ads or text pages, honestly.)  I then, if needed, rotate the page ONCE to straighten it using irfanview.  If I'm not happy with the first rotation, I'll reload the page and retry until I am. If the page is damaged in someway I can repair, I may do so.  My skills there are VERY limited; I'm normally restricted to just working on the page border, but this can make a big difference when you auto level a couple steps later.  Then I trim so there's only a small border around the art.  (I know not everybody likes that, but I personally think it looks best.  And it helps unify the pages if you need to rotate some of them, which you almost always do.)  I'll then save the scan, still as a TIFF, to a new folder with whatever I want the final name to be.  (Normally just the number.)  Once the book is all done, I'll fire up photoshop elements.  Normally all I do there is batch process to auto level, resize the scans if needed, and convert to JPEG; I can get a bit more advanced on really dark scans.  Then I zip it up, rename the zip, check for errors, and post away.  I don't know that my results are that spectacular, but I do know my end results are definitely improving from my earlier ones.

That answer your question about techniques, Rez?

Oh, and GI Joe v5 42 ready to go.  Enjoy!

[OtherEric]

And GI Joe v6 46 now ready for download.  This is one where I would have tried for a heritage cover but I couldn't find one.  Still, enjoy!

[dhfh]

I then use the auto crop feature in irfanview but is problematic in that it will not process a tiff so I save to jpeg so it will function and then open the new crop and resize, sharpen and enhance.

Somehow it seems that the added step to change to jpeg for the auto crop could be altered or eliminated in some way so as not to lose any clarity by the extra changing to the jpeg.

Rez,

First off I stopped using Irfanview a while back, so I'm treading on thin ice, here, but, I think I might be able to help you eliminate the "change to jpeg for auto crop" step.  The one thing about being an image-editing novice in this situation is that you might not be aware of another file format that might solve your whole problem with this step.  If you can't process a tiff file with irfanview, try saving the image as a bmp file.

This is where my time "out of  touch" with irfanview makes for thin ice.  I'm not sure you can process a bmp file the same way you can process a jpeg.  But, I'm willing to bet you can.  The bmp file format was created by Microsoft and has been the "standard" image format for Windows practically since the first version.  It's a simple, straightforward file format that does NO compression at all.  Because of this, it has several things going for it (and many things going against it).  First, it can be thought of as a "tiff-lite" format because saving as bmp is almost the same as saving as uncompressed tiff.  Second, being a simple and Windows-backed format means most editing software can process these files without any major programming having to be done.  So, irfanview most likely can process bmp files, when it can't process the more flexible, commplex, and non-Windows-backed tiff files.

If this trick works, I'd recommend doing all editing in bmp format since you use irfanview, but still use tiff if you're going to share an unfinshed image with someone else.  And of course, still use jpeg for the final image because of the compression and universal readiblity.

One final note:  bmp files are fairly universal.  Most computers have software available for reading/viewing them.  But, tiff files are far more universal, and there is software for non-Windows computers out there that can read tiffs, but not bmps.  That's why most people use tiff over bmp.

Hope I'm right about this and it helps,

DHFH

[rez]

Hey Thanks for that.
I'll try it and let you know.

Cheers

[OtherEric]

I didn't even know Irfanview had an auto crop feature; I always do it manually.  And the normal crop works fine with TIFFs.

[Yoc]

Hi Eric,
IrFan has several options in the BATCH section under ADVANCED.
Cropping, colour correction, resizing, sharpening, rotation and file conversions can all be done here.
I've used it to sharpen and convert TIFFs to Jpg when I've done scans but that's it.

-Yoc

[OtherEric]

GI Joe v7 051 now uploaded thanks to JVJ.  Enjoy!

[Yoc]

Thanks Eric

[darkmark]

Hey, what's this?  Where's Cobra???

...Just kidding! 

[OtherEric]

And since there seems to be a run on Blue Beetle and early Fox in general right now, I want to thank JVJ for letting me play too:

Blue Beetle 8 now ready for download.

[OtherEric]

And getting back on Target:

Target Comics v8 n12 ready for download.  It's coverless and the only cover I could find was on the GCD; other than that I think it's a pretty good job.

[Yoc]

Thanks Eric!
Tonight was a banner night for me.
I love every title uploaded!

[OtherEric]

Target Comics v8 10 now ready for download.  Sadly, this issue is missing the first wrap, so the Cadet and Target stories are incomplete.  Still quite worthwhile for us target fans, though.  With the exception of a few odd covers and pages, we now have all but two issues from 8/9 to 10/3; I'll grab the rest of 8 and part of 7 next batch.

This concluded the Target issues I got from JVJ this time; now I dive headfirst into the Jingle Jangles.

[Yoc]

Thanks Eric!