Other Scanning Old Magazines - a Worklog

Because the quality is terrible. I mean, it's not, it's *okay*, but it's nowhere near what you get from a scanner.

I actually have a CZUR book scanner: a phone-like camera on an overhead stand with lights and lasers that measure the curvature of the pages to dewarp them. I don't use that much, either, for the same reason, and I can use that hands-free - it has a foot switch.

Plus, the scanner is much faster - I can't snap phone pictures at 80 images a minute - *if* the bloody pages feed straight...

EDIT:
This is what I mean:



Looks OK at first, but then you realise a bit of the top is missing and the dewarp algorithm has got very confused and made the bottom, which was already flat 'cos it's the front cover, go like a flag.



Page is still warped towards the spine, the glossy paper has a reflection from the window, and my thumb's in the way. Bottom-left corner's blurred, too.



Same issues again: the page is too warped for the dewarp algorithm to handle, and my thumb's in the way. It's also cut off the top again.

As for quality, I have to admit it did a better job than I was expecting (and the last time I tried similar software, which was, granted, a few phones ago now) - but it's still not what you get from an actual scanner.

Here's the best shot Genius Scan managed:



Which is, yeah, it's readable, and for anyone lower on the autism spectrum than I it's probably absolutely fine. But when I know I can get this:



Then, yeah, I'd like that, please!

(Both 1:1 crops of the unedited image: Genius Scan was set to "Highest Quality" and the scanner to 300dpi; the scanner goes up to 600dpi, but I'm already running out of RAM on the bigger mags and spitting out 700MB PDFs, so I'm sticking at 300dpi. Helps that it's about three times as fast as 600dpi, too.)

I've picked up a new scanner which, I'm hoping, will more reliably feed the pages straight *and* is faster at 80ipm instead of 50ipm (double-sided); I can't do much about how long it takes to cut the pages free from the spine, though, without risking a finger or two...

 

What stage is my obsession at? It's at the "comparing JPEG encoders" stage, thank you for asking.

 

Finished cleaning the last of the mouldy ones today. It'd be nice to do the other two bags of not-visibly-mouldy-but-a-bit-stinky ones too before they get sliced and scanned, but my back's already killing so that's enough for today.

New scanner hasn't arrived yet, but I gave the pinch roller on the old one a good clean and with the new page separator in there it's behaving itself for now. Even did an entire Software Warehouse catalogue without needing a rescan!

That's Issue 36 to PNG - I wanted to do that first 'cos not only was it one of the mouldy ones but it had water damage to the back corner. Gave it a good douse in isoprop and dried it out before scanning. 756 pages including covers... 13.6GB(!).

Not sure I've got it in me to do another today!

 

Anyone still rocking a Matrox Millennium II in the 21st century?

 

Still no sign of the new scanner. It was booked in at a parcel shop yesterday, but the tracking doesn't say it's been dropped off yet. Bah!

Been busy with work of late, so I've been letting things go off the boil a little. Decided to rectify that: scanned Issue 89. Cut the top edges at an angle again, I still haven't worked out how to stop that. As always, it only affects the edge-to-edge catalogue inserts - speaking of which, thanks, Dabs, for picking some kind of weird glossy paper that's gone really wrinkly and wouldn't feed through the ADF. No casualties this time, and it was relatively short so I did it manually on the flatbed.

380 pages, 6.6GB.

EDIT:
Doing issue... 116 now. We're officially moving out of "nostalgia" and into "hey, I still use that."



I had that on my camera literally this morning, doing product photography!

EDIT EDIT:
Disaster: I'd literally scanned the back cover of 116, when my music stopped; the desktop'd crashed. Rebooted, opened up Simple Scan, held my breath... "There is an autosaved book available. Do you wish to open it?"

Yes.

It *looked* to have everything except the last page, but it's not happy: crashed when I scrolled to the end. Reopened it, reopened the scan, and hit export: it got to page 304 (P290 in official numbering), skipped 305, then wrote a zero-byte 306 before crashing.

At least I don't have to scan the whole thing again, but I'm really curious as to what happened there. It's never done that before!