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Japanese Magazines Scan Project


JhonnyD

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34 minutes ago, Habanero said:

I might also end up buying some JP mags to scan (Game Criticism is really interesting), do you mind if I also link those here since it's a thread about scanning JP mags?

You should make your own thread for your own material. And collaborate with people scanning it already to ensure you don't scan something already scanned.

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52 minutes ago, JonnyCGood said:

You should make your own thread for your own material. And collaborate with people scanning it already to ensure you don't scan something already scanned.

And if you edit them so that they can be shared at our site instead of just uploading them to the Internet Archive or elsewhere, it would make using our forums to advertise them far more amicable.😉

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  • 1 month later...
1 hour ago, gingerbeardman said:

For me the biggest barrier when taking part is editing to meet the high standards of RetroMags. Of course those standards should be in place, but they are a high bar to pass and most will give up on the way.

Just to set the record straight, we do not have "high standards" regarding editing.  Here are our standards:

EDITED: APPROVED

UNEDITED: NOT APPROVED

That's it.  And all "edited" really means is "cropped and straightened, without major physical defects."  So while I may edit the gutter side of every page and try to seamlessly join all two-page spreads, E-Day just chops that part of the page off and calls it a day.  Both are still equally considered "edited."

We don't accept raw scans.  That's all.

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  • Retromags Curator

I do also edit the gutter side of the page when it's a scan where the magazine wasn't taken apart. If the pattern is too complex or there is something difficult to fix like text or a photo, then I may chop it and pretend that that's how it would look if you were reading the actual magazine because of where it was stapled :)

Major defects should be loosely defined. To me that means no white along the edges of the page and no major obstructions like dust. If there is a smudge because that's how the page actually was, or the colour is offset of there is something actually wrong on the page, then that can be left as is because that's the actual magazine.

Colour correction is subjective because everybody's monitors/screen are calibrated differently, and the apps and programs people are using are also set differently from each other. I may actually stop doing colour correction. It's something I am going to look into.

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8 hours ago, E-Day said:

I do also edit the gutter side of the page when it's a scan where the magazine wasn't taken apart. If the pattern is too complex or there is something difficult to fix like text or a photo, then I may chop it and pretend that that's how it would look if you were reading the actual magazine because of where it was stapled :)

Major defects should be loosely defined. To me that means no white along the edges of the page and no major obstructions like dust. If there is a smudge because that's how the page actually was, or the colour is offset of there is something actually wrong on the page, then that can be left as is because that's the actual magazine.

Colour correction is subjective because everybody's monitors/screen are calibrated differently, and the apps and programs people are using are also set differently from each other. I may actually stop doing colour correction. It's something I am going to look into.

Yes, to be fair, editing the gutter side of the page to join images seamlessly almost always entails a bit of photoshop wizardry.  You often end up digitally creating missing parts of the image, since sometimes the pages themselves don't match up perfectly.  So if you've ever looked at any of my two-page ads in our gallery and thought "that looks nice" please realize that it took a lot of work and probably looks better than the actual printed page.  It's a 100% thankless job, so I understand why most people just leave the pages with a disjointed gap in the image running down the center.

Major defects are physical flaws in the magazine that weren't present when it rolled off the presses.  Most of these are usually present on the front and back cover moreso than the interior pages.  Things like creases, rips, scratches, and markings like handwriting should all be removed in photoshop.  Stickers should be eliminated if it's possible to recreate whatever they're covering, but it's often the case that the sticker is too large or is covering up impossible to recreate text or imagery, in which case it's best left as is.

Color correction is, as E-Day points out subjective.  All I will say is this -  pages scanned by a quality scanner (the machine, not the person) will probably not really need it.  Pages scanned with a low quality scanner can benefit greatly from it.  And everyone needs to be aware that every magazine is different as well.  You cannot simply apply the same corrections to every magazine, even if they're all scanned using the same scanner.  The age, texture, reflective quality, and thickness of the paper will all influence the results of the scan in different ways, so every time you begin to edit a new mag, you need to create a new set of adjustments catered to that particular issue of that magazine if you decide it needs adjusting.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's sad that even when put into collections, archive is still a disorganized mess.  It's a shame that a site with a multi-million dollar annual budget can't keep things looking nice, but I guess chaos is unavoidable on a site of their scope where uploads aren't moderated at all.

On the plus side to archive's disaster-area level of organization is the fact that it makes it much harder for copyright-holders to issue comprehensive takedown orders.  In that sense, putting mags into collections has the potential to be negative, as it makes them into bigger, clearer targets, like when Nintendo forced archive to remove the collection of Nintendo Power one of their employees created, all of which had been taken from our site without our permission.

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  • 1 month later...

Archive collections are a mess, I just curate my own upload but even then in my profile random collections like "user xyz favorites" tends to appear

And with the lockdown end expect the uploads to get back to a crawl :)

Edited by JhonnyD
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On 11/11/2019 at 6:03 AM, kitsunebi said:

Retromags is a site for people nostalgic about not just games, but more specifically the magazines they used to read.  Emphasis on "USED TO."  The reason everyone here has a hard-on for GamePro, Nintendo Power, and EGM is because those are the magazines they read as a kid, back when magazines were actually valuable sources of information about new and upcoming games, and not just a sad rehash of information everyone has already seen online like they are nowadays.  

So while there is cause to scan stuff covering the 8-32 bit eras, and probably the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era to a lesser extent, by the time of the PS3/Xbox360/Wii era magazines had pretty much stopped mattering.  Very few if any people will ever be nostalgic for any mags from that era in the same way as people are about something like Nintendo Power #1.  So there isn't going to be much enthusiasm driving anyone to scan those mags.

Couldn't agree more. I grew up reading GamePro, Nintendo Power, EGM, EGM2 and those have been the majority that I've downloaded from here. I wasn't into gaming as much by the time PS2/Xbox/Gamecube arrived. I also gotta say I HATE the way GamePro changed their layout in the later years. Yuck!

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Issue 77 and 108, both dealing with SFII have dropped online. No clue who's scanning these or if there's any more out there. So you've said you don't have the "special issues" correct? So this could easily work out. This project does the standard issues while these special issues pop up periodically scanned by unknown parties.

https://archive.org/details/ii-street-fighter-ii-dash-gamest-77

https://archive.org/details/ii-super-street-fighter-ii-gamest-108

Edited by JonnyCGood
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/29/2020 at 2:40 AM, JhonnyD said:

Archive collections are a mess, I just curate my own upload but even then in my profile random collections like "user xyz favorites" tends to appear

And with the lockdown end expect the uploads to get back to a crawl :)

I was wondering what happened to you after the Toaplan Gamest issue (https://archive.org/services/img/gamest0049) but now i know why XD. I hope you're doing well man :)

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  • 2 months later...
On 5/24/2020 at 12:58 AM, JonnyCGood said:

Gamest has a collection on archive

Did this need to be created for you? Please tell me more. Cheers!

edit: found it... 50 item minimum https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360017502272-How-to-request-a-collection-

Edited by gingerbeardman
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  • 2 weeks later...

Some more Gamest Scan news:

 

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I'm not interested in a collaboration right now, this is mostly a personal endeavor to digitalize my collection and sharing it. I want the scans to be somewhat consistent. Also this is strictly an hobby and for fun, I'll prefer spend the little free time I got on scanning another magazine rather than coordinate with a team.

Having said that is a good thing to have more sources available, especially for Gamest Mooks since I own just a few of them.

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I meant co-ordination, not necessarily collaboration, just to make sure they're not re-scanning material over again. A lot of people have been scanning Gamest Mooks for a while, and not all of them are labeling them as such. This person has scanned GM 162 but that had already been scanned years ago.

I saved their whole scan page for Gamest Mook and Other scans since who knows when a self hosted site could die? It's a little weird that they're not using an external host like Internet archive to host their scans. And of course they have no means to contact them other than twitter.

Looking a bit deeper, their scan of Vampire Savior Fanbook is uncropped and their Cap! vol.11 doesn't have a direct link on their page so I am linking it here. But overlal the scans look pretty good. You should ask them if you can host them on retromags.

Edited by JonnyCGood
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At the very least tell them that .cbz is the format they should be using. If they're okay with their scans showing up on retromags, that's good too.

Oh, and speaking of people doing gamest scans. There's someone named Gamebookscaner on archive who scanned GM Vol.2 "King of Fighters '94" and GM Vol.14:King of Fighters 95. I figured it was one of you guys uploading their scans before they're edited to be put on retromags site.

I've also confirmed that the new gamest scans that pop up on Japanese sites are new scans not old ones that re-surfaced. So they're probably aware of the Japanese magazine scanning project and is scanning books that aren't being scanned by that project.

Edited by JonnyCGood
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On 11/3/2020 at 12:05 AM, JonnyCGood said:

At the very least tell them that .cbz is the format they should be using. If they're okay with their scans showing up on retromags, that's good too.

Oh, and speaking of people doing gamest scans. There's someone named Gamebookscaner on archive who scanned GM Vol.2 "King of Fighters '94" and GM Vol.14:King of Fighters 95. I figured it was one of you guys uploading their scans before they're edited to be put on retromags site.

I've also confirmed that the new gamest scans that pop up on Japanese sites are new scans not old ones that re-surfaced. So they're probably aware of the Japanese magazine scanning project and is scanning books that aren't being scanned by that project.

A lot of stuff getting scanned for sure, at this point I have to take notice and prioritize unscanned stuff.

Some stuff will get duplicated as I plan to scan my whole collection anyway. Everything I'm doing is mostly a personal project that will be hopefully benefit the community.

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  • 4 months later...

Gamebook Scanner (blazblue) is back to uploading. Included in their new uploads are issues of PlayStation Magazine, and Gamest 95. I wonder if they're the ones responsible for the other issues of Gamest floating around? These scans have been shared on Chinese scanner forums and thankfully have been started to being uploaded to public sites. The good news is that there's much more out there, and the more people scanning the more likely we are to get these books scanned.

 

Edited by JonnyCGood
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