+Allan Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 If you're willing to buy a scanner and if your willing to destroy copies of the magazine your scanning it isn't that bad. If you get a scanner that has a decent automatic feeder you can set it up and scan the whole magazine in an hour with very little work. Here's what I do with most magazines and books. 1. Cut the binding off with an exacto knife. Sometimes I use my old-fashion paper cutter if I can. 2. Set up my scanner software (VueScan) for size, color, etc. If a magazine or book is black print only I use 'Text' mode in my scanning software. It makes good scans at a much smaller memory size. 3. Scan the whole thing on both sides. (about an hour depending on the size) Once I start it I can go do something else until I have to flip it over for the even pages.) 4. I use a program called Combine PDFs to colate (sp?) everything in proper order (5 minutes) 5. Run it through Acrobat professional to OCR the text and straiten out the scan if they are a little off. (5 minutes). 6. Scan the front and back cover if they are card stock. (5 minutes) 7. Drag the cover into the rest of the PDF. 8. Upload it onto the Intertubes. Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindog2112 Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 If you're willing to buy a scanner and if your willing to destroy copies of the magazine your scanning it isn't that bad. If you get a scanner that has a decent automatic feeder you can set it up and scan the whole magazine in an hour with very little work. Here's what I do with most magazines and books. 1. Cut the binding off with an exacto knife. Sometimes I use my old-fashion paper cutter if I can. 2. Set up my scanner software (VueScan) for size, color, etc. If a magazine or book is black print only I use 'Text' mode in my scanning software. It makes good scans at a much smaller memory size. 3. Scan the whole thing on both sides. (about an hour depending on the size) Once I start it I can go do something else until I have to flip it over for the even pages.) 4. I use a program called Combine PDFs to colate (sp?) everything in proper order (5 minutes) 5. Run it through Acrobat professional to OCR the text and straiten out the scan if they are a little off. (5 minutes). 6. Scan the front and back cover if they are card stock. (5 minutes) 7. Drag the cover into the rest of the PDF. 8. Upload it onto the Intertubes. Allan See, you had me at step #1 - I'm just too lazy. I have no problem destroying or giving the magazines away though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent700 Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 4. I use a program called Combine PDFs to colate (sp?) everything in proper order (5 minutes) Can you link to this program? I have had minor success writing my own scripts to handle collation, page splitting (for 11x17 scans of unstapled brochures, magazines, etc) but if there's something out there that handles it better, I'd like to use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Software/CombinePDFs.shtml Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkO Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 I would do the scanning myself, but there are two factors preventing that: 1: Not owning a decent scanner, or a scanner that I'm willing to burn out the lamp life on. 2: Being too lazy - I can't even imagine the hours that ThumpNugget put in to provide the quality end result he uploaded. You have to admit that when you get other Scaned Magazines, ThumpNugget's are one of the very best scans... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariRage Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 (edited) You have to admit that when you get other Scaned Magazines, ThumpNugget's are one of the very best scans... Yes, completely agreed. The process for scanning the magazines provided by Allan is technically correct, but it doesn't involve all the labourious checking and re-scanning of errors. Sure, there was the odd error in ThumpNugget's scans, but they were generally quickly corrected and uploaded again. "Quality Assurance" is the discipline that most other folks scanning magazines seem to ignore. Come back ThumpNugget!! Edited March 24, 2014 by AtariRage Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Famicoman Posted May 25, 2014 Share Posted May 25, 2014 Hey all, while ThunmpNugget is currently MIA, I have been compiling a list of the issues of Byte currently available on The Internet Archive and am working to make sure that ThumpNuggest's scans are mirrored there as well. It'll be a little bit of a process but here is what I am working with: http://anarchivism.org/w/Byte_(Magazine)#Downloads 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pjsau Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 (edited) I've just scanned and uploaded a pdf of the November 1985 issue to Internet archive. The page link is https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-12_201502 Enjoy! Edited February 2, 2015 by pjsau 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoTonah Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Excellent! Thank you. I've been hoping someone would pick up where Thumpnugget left off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roberto Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Good job! Thanks!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Great set of topics in this issue! Thanks for posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent700 Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 (edited) Hey all, while ThunmpNugget is currently MIA, I have been compiling a list of the issues of Byte currently available on The Internet Archive and am working to make sure that ThumpNuggest's scans are mirrored there as well. It'll be a little bit of a process but here is what I am working with: http://anarchivism.org/w/Byte_(Magazine)#Downloads I was going to post, asking if anyone had a definitive list of what Byte issues had been scanned (and any problems with the scans,) as I have a lot of paper copies that I don't have room for any more, but this seems to be the answer. I hope it will be kept current. I do a lot of scanning myself but I don't see getting to them any time soon. I'd be happy to donate missing issues to anyone doing quality scans. Edited February 2, 2015 by Silent700 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Yes. Thanks on the scan. It's good enough to replace the older crap scan I had. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent700 Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 I have tried my hand at scanning an issue of Byte. I've got a lot of experience scanning B/W documentation, greyscale pics, etc., but color jobs are a bit new to me. My biggest issue seems to be bleed-through on some of the white pages. Adjusting brightness and contrast helped a bit, later in the scan. Unfortunately the ToC page was cruelly eaten by the scanner's rollers, so the only image we have there is of the corpse laid out on the flatbed. Still (mostly) legible, however. Here is Byte V19N9 (September 1994) at archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ByteV19N9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindog2112 Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 I have tried my hand at scanning an issue of Byte. I've got a lot of experience scanning B/W documentation, greyscale pics, etc., but color jobs are a bit new to me. My biggest issue seems to be bleed-through on some of the white pages. Adjusting brightness and contrast helped a bit, later in the scan. Unfortunately the ToC page was cruelly eaten by the scanner's rollers, so the only image we have there is of the corpse laid out on the flatbed. Still (mostly) legible, however. Here is Byte V19N9 (September 1994) at archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ByteV19N9 Hey Silent700 - I have this magazine and have scanned the page that got eaten by your scanner: http://imgur.com/a/o6jAi?gallery Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent700 Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 Hey Silent700 - I have this magazine and have scanned the page that got eaten by your scanner: http://imgur.com/a/o6jAi?gallery Awesome, thanks! I was just finishing up re-doing the PDF. I only noticed after I uploaded it (derp) that there were a bunch of pages out of order and some bad skewing problems. I'll add your pages to it right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 Hey silent700, I can open with adobe reader/acrobat, but not an older version of foxit reader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent700 Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 Hey silent700, I can open with adobe reader/acrobat, but not an older version of foxit reader. I am using Acrobat Pro XI - do you know what version of PDF that Foxit wants? Saving back too old may increase the file size or other bad things. I don't have much experience with maintaining compatibility with older readers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 I can check when I get home. But I know the version of foxit I'm using is from the 3 series. An old version for sure. The last before they started using spyware. I always believe in this day an age there's little reason to sacrifice compatibility and quality to save "bandwidth". Just look at how much garbage flows on the Internet as it is. Whomever scanned the Creative Computing magazine compressed the shit out of it and did a disservice to the community. Many pages are unusable. And archive quality is 500 miles down south. But because they are scanned already, it may be years before someone takes the time to do it right. If ever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent700 Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 I always believe in this day an age there's little reason to sacrifice compatibility and quality to save "bandwidth". Just look at how much garbage flows on the Internet as it is. As with everything, there is a balance to be struck. I agree that that balance should lean away from pinching bytes and toward quality and, to some extent, compatibility. I'd be interested in making sure docs work in other viewers - I understand that there are faster/less exploitable products out there than Adobe's own, and of course there are other platforms besides Windows - but I'd draw a line at supporting really old versions of viewers. At some point, it's time to upgrade. I'm going to download Foxit for testing and try to find the compatibility options in Acrobat Pro. I used to know where that menu was.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 If you're archive these for future generations, then it is your sworn duty to find the format (and version) that will be readable by the greatest number of programs, versions, and platforms. Sometimes that may mean two different formats altogether. On counterpoint, it is also the responsibility of the reader of archived materials to be able to accept as many formats as possible. And for that I have Acrobat installed too. Either way, I prefer reading in Foxit reader. My version of Foxit reader is 3.0.1301. It seems to read 1.7 ok. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent700 Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 New version of V19N9 posted (same link) with Raindog2112's rescan of my crumpled page along with many skew, out-of-order and contrast corrections. Still not perfect but much improved. Also, I found the compatibility settings in Acrobat XI and it appears I'm saving (default settings) for PDF 1.7 readers. So it shouldn't be excluding much. Also, anyone can download the .jp2.zip file from Archive and recompile a PDF to an older version as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fujidude Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 (edited) Can you link to this program? I have had minor success writing my own scripts to handle collation, page splitting (for 11x17 scans of unstapled brochures, magazines, etc) but if there's something out there that handles it better, I'd like to use it. PDFTKBiilder - free PDF manipulation PDF Split and Merge - also free, more advanced, supports visual page reordering, is a Java JAR app. PDFXchage Viewer - free version. Does OCR and allows markups and such too. All of these work on Windows. Some, I think the 1st two also are made for Linux etc. Edited February 25, 2015 by fujidude Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tor Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 (edited) Re. V19N9: There's something strange with that scan, both the original and the updated one. The first pages, through the table of contents, are normal size. From then on every page is very small (and much faster to page, but I would rather have the full size..) I checked this with three different PDF readers on Linux, xpdf, okular, and mupdf. They use three completely different PDF engines. Okular tells me that the first seven pages of the pdf file has a page size of around 7.8 x 10.1 inches (it varies a bit between pages), pages from page 8 on (of the pdf file, not the Byte page numbering - the page where the QNX ad starts in the updated version) are about 3.9 x 5.25 inches. The pdf file also renders slower in all three readers than another older Byte scan I have on the same computer (a notebook, that's why I notice the slowness). That may be because of the scan resolution or something - maybe it's higher - but for some reason the small pages aren't that fast either. BTW the older Byte scan I compared with has a page size of 7.795 x 10.685 inches, consistently. For reference I now copied one of ThumpNugget's scans to my notebook, the pages there seem to vary around 8.01-8.05 x 10.83-10.85 inches. -Tor Edited February 25, 2015 by Tor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silent700 Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 Hmm, thanks for letting me know. It displays normally for me in Acrobat, but that is all I have handy for testing. Page size issues like that are usually the result of bad/missing DPI info in the imported TIFF files. I scanned those pages at 300dpi and the TIFF should retain that info. In the case of the re-scan I was give earlier in this thread, I had to re-save the JPG as TIFF and force the DPI setting to avoid that sizing problem. Why the other pages are doing that, I'm not sure. I did edit quite a few pages (for skew, brightness, etc.) in Photoshop by way of Acrobat's "Edit in..." dialog. I wouldn't be surprised if it screws up (or strips) the DPI value when it returns the image to Acrobat. Argh. Lessons learned..... If your viewer allows you to turn off the facing-page mode that I made the default in the PDF and turn on "display at screen height" or similar, it should at least display each page properly for you. The dots are all there but the reader doesn't know what to do with two facing pages with the same dot-dimensions but different DPI settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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