Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen Player's Guide (Strategy Guide) - Work in Progress...

[wattsup42]

I scoured the internet trying to find a digital copy of this for ease of access while playing through the game. I couldn't find any scans.

I purchased a copy from eBay and am scanning all 216+ pages.

Front Cover, Inside Front Cover, Pages 1 - 30

Any recommendations on quality or steps after scanning would be appreciated. This is my first time scanning something like this.

I am using a Brother HL-L3290CDW, scanning in Color at 600dpi. Attached are my scan settings - using the macOS scan utility.

[kitsunebi]

OK, but you probably aren't gonna like my advice.

The single most important step for getting a good scan, especially on something square-bound like this, is the step you aren't taking - debinding the mag/book.  There simply is no other way to get a high quality scan.  This is often the biggest hurdle for first-time scanners to overcome - the realization that making the best digital copy possible means destroying the original.  For what it's worth, the first time cutting up a mag for scanning is always the hardest (destroy my mag??!AREYOUSERIOUS??!!), but it becomes second nature after that.

Using a flatbed scanner to scan a mag that hasn't been debound (as you're doing here) will leave you with pages that have distortion and shadow on the gutter side of every page.  For something like a novel, where the text is all aligned a certain distance away from the gutter, it might be possible to simply crop that part of the page away without disturbing the text.  But for magazines that isn't a viable solution, since many pages have elements that stretch from edge to edge across the page, sometimes even crossing over onto the facing page.

Indeed, the pages you've scanned thus far show distortion of the text near the gutter side of the page.  There's nothing you can do in the editing phase to fix this entirely:

 

Which is a shame, because otherwise, this looks like it would be an easy book to get a quality scan from.  The pages are printed on high-grade paper, so you wouldn't have to worry much about correcting for yellowing or bleed-through during the editing phase, and the colors look strong.  With proper cropping and straightening, they'd probably be good to go.

The covers are probably the only pages in need of more intensive editing, and this book has a foil/metallic cover, which can be even more of a hassle than usual.  It's quite normal for front/back covers to require the most work, since those are usually the pages exposed to the most wear and tear.  You can easily put hours into restoring a single cover if it's severely worn.  For this you'll need editing software. I'm sorry, I'm not personally familiar with using anything but Photoshop, but even older versions of Photoshop are fine if you don't want to buy into the yearly subscription plan for their newest version (mine is over 10 years old.)

Using things like content aware fill (newer versions of Photoshop are probably even better at this with the improvement of AI fills), you can get rid of most creases, scratches, tears, etc.  I wasn't about to waste much of my time with it, but just to give you an idea, I spent a few minutes touching up some of the most egregious damage spots on the cover you uploaded.  You could obviously make it look much better by putting more effort into it than I did.

[wattsup42]

2 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

OK, but you probably aren't gonna like my advice.

The single most important step for getting a good scan, especially on something square-bound like this, is the step you aren't taking - debinding the mag/book.  There simply is no other way to get a high quality scan.  This is often the biggest hurdle for first-time scanners to overcome - the realization that making the best digital copy possible means destroying the original.  For what it's worth, the first time cutting up a mag for scanning is always the hardest (destroy my mag??!AREYOUSERIOUS??!!), but it becomes second nature after that.

Using a flatbed scanner to scan a mag that hasn't been debound (as you're doing here) will leave you with pages that have distortion and shadow on the gutter side of every page.  For something like a novel, where the text is all aligned a certain distance away from the gutter, it might be possible to simply crop that part of the page away without disturbing the text.  But for magazines that isn't a viable solution, since many pages have elements that stretch from edge to edge across the page, sometimes even crossing over onto the facing page.

Indeed, the pages you've scanned thus far show distortion of the text near the gutter side of the page.  There's nothing you can do in the editing phase to fix this entirely:

 

Which is a shame, because otherwise, this looks like it would be an easy book to get a quality scan from.  The pages are printed on high-grade paper, so you wouldn't have to worry much about correcting for yellowing or bleed-through during the editing phase, and the colors look strong.  With proper cropping and straightening, they'd probably be good to go.

The covers are probably the only pages in need of more intensive editing, and this book has a foil/metallic cover, which can be even more of a hassle than usual.  It's quite normal for front/back covers to require the most work, since those are usually the pages exposed to the most wear and tear.  You can easily put hours into restoring a single cover if it's severely worn.  For this you'll need editing software. I'm sorry, I'm not personally familiar with using anything but Photoshop, but even older versions of Photoshop are fine if you don't want to buy into the yearly subscription plan for their newest version (mine is over 10 years old.)

Using things like content aware fill (newer versions of Photoshop are probably even better at this with the improvement of AI fills), you can get rid of most creases, scratches, tears, etc.  I wasn't about to waste much of my time with it, but just to give you an idea, I spent a few minutes touching up some of the most egregious damage spots on the cover you uploaded.  You could obviously make it look much better by putting more effort into it than I did.

I appreciate all of this feedback!

I really want this digital over physical, so I don't have a problem going through the process of debinding it. Do you have any recommendations for re-binding or a solid binder to make the physical copy somewhat usable?

I am also pretty experienced with photo editing software (I use Pixelmator Pro), so I can take a look at making the covers a bit more in line with how they look irl.

Thank you so much!!!

[kitsunebi]

Sorry, I don't have any advice re: rebinding.  Every mag I scan goes into the recycling once I'm done.

Unlike magazines, strategy guides are a lot more functional/useful as physical documents that can be quickly flipped back and forth through, so I can see why you'd want to save the pages though.

[wattsup42]

Finally got around to wrapping up the scanning. I am working on submitting the release here, but don't have access to submit a file. I have a cbz and cover ready.

[MigJmz]

5 hours ago, wattsup42 said:

Finally got around to wrapping up the scanning. I am working on submitting the release here, but don't have access to submit a file. I have a cbz and cover ready.

Upload to a free site like Mega.nz or Dropbox and send it over