I'm a new user with PDFs what do I do?

[Austerror]

Hello everyone,

 

I have a bunch of magazine scans that I made myself, about 10 years ago of various gaming related magazines. The original paper is long gone.

Can I donate them for review?  How would I do that?

Some of the titles I can upload:

Atomic

Edge

Fangoria

Game Executive

Game Developer

Game Informer

Hyper

ImagineFX

N64 Gamer

OXM

PC Gamer

PC Powerplay

PC Zone

Play Station

Wired

 

These are not complete collections. Hyper for example I have two, March 1995 and September 1995. Atomic I have 59 issues.

Scan quality, is generally 'good'. Not perfect but not terrible. If I recall correctly the scanner I used at the time had a max scan resolution of 600x600, or 400x400. The Atomic scans are around the 50MB +-10MB.

 

Would these files be of any use?

 

Thanks

 

Aus

[kitsunebi]

Minimum pixel height allowed here is 2200, though that's actually an older standard and many of our current scans (such as those from myself and dablais) are 3200-3500 px high, which is fairly close to 300 DPI for standard A4 magazines.

A scan that is only 600 px high would not be allowed (I've been scanning for 10 years, and I've never heard of a scanner with a max resolution so low.).  But even if they aren't acceptable here, I'd urge you to check the Internet Archive, and if the issues you've scanned aren't already available there, upload your copies.  So long as they're readable, someone will surely appreciate them.

(If you're interested in obtaining high resolution scans of many of the titles you listed, I encourage you to check out OldGameMags, which has near-complete collections of many of the titles you listed.)

[Austerror]

My bad, scan resolution should read 600dpi or 400dpi. Not 600 pixels wide for the entire page.

[kitsunebi]

1 hour ago, Austerror said:

My bad, scan resolution should read 600dpi or 400dpi. Not 600 pixels wide for the entire page.

That sounds more like it.  Although a 600 DPI scan will typically be a gigabyte or more, so it's extremely unlikely you made a scan at that resolution.  400 DPI isn't really a scanning resolution anyone uses (for whatever reason), but even a 300 DPI scan will be significantly larger than 50 MB (usually 300-500 MB depending on length.)

Oldgamemags has the complete collection of Atomic from #1-143, and none of them are as small as 50MB.  Although since you said your files are PDF, its possible (probable) that whatever software you used to create the PDF used a very high compression rate to decrease the quality/size of the jpgs (one of the reasons we don't use PDFs here.) 

There are extremely few programs out there capable of extracting jpgs from a PDF without first resampling them.  Even Adobe Pro will resample the images, meaning that the filesize of the jpgs you started with before creating the PDF will not exactly match their filesize after being extracted, due to a degradation in file quality by a generation (another reason we avoid PDFs).

I've attached a simple tool which CAN extract jpgs losslessly.  Just drag your PDF onto the .BAT file and it will extract the jpgs.  Then you'll be able to see the pixel dimensions of your scans.  I'd say its pretty unlikely they meet the 2200px minumum (again, unless they were very heavily compressed at some point), but once you've extracted the jpgs and saved them as a CBR/CBZ, you can always upload them to a free filehost of your choice and PM a link to an admin here if you would like them to be considered for uploading here.

PDFImageSplitter.zip

Edited November 2 by kitsunebi

[Austerror]

I found some of my original image files.  I scanned 600DPI, into a TIF file.  Each page is about 100MB. Resolution for each page is 4960x7015 pixels.  Depending on page size of course.

I've never created a CBR/CBZ file. I know they are used for comics. Is CBR/CBZ the new file format that everyone is using now?

I won't be extracting the images and repacking them into another file format. I'm happy to share these files as is, if someone wishes.

[kitsunebi]

CBR/CBZ are literally just RAR/ZIP files with different extensions.  You can take a RAR or ZIP file full of jpgs, change the extension to CBR or CBZ, repectively, and BLAM!  -- now a CBR reader can open it (some don't even require the extension and can open RAR/ZIP files.

PDF is good for stuff that's primarily text, but for magazines which are mostly images (since even the text is usually printed against an image in the background) we prefer to keep the jpgs unmolested and readily available, not locked away in a PDF.

There may have been a debate about which format to use when Retromags first started 20 years ago, I'm not sure.  I only joined 11 years ago, but even then this was a CBR/CBZ-only site, so it's not a new development.  PDFs have never been allowed in all that time.

 

As for your files, we don't host 600 DPI files here, but you can always do what I do - share a 300 DPI version here, and also upload both the 300 and 600 versions to the Internet Archive (which has a budget in the millions of dollars, so they can afford the storage.)  If you're unwilling to create CBRs, then I guess the Internet Archive is your only shot (they don't really moderate any uploads there, so you're free to upload anything of any format or quality -- although sometimes stuff will be removed if a copyright-holder sends a complaint.)

[MigJmz]

you can upload these files to mega.nz or a dropbox and send me the link for review.