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Scanners, please tell us about your scanner
Yoc:
I agree Larry.
I've long thought the move to Baxter, etc paper with super high-end printing wasn't needed and drove the price way higher than I was ever comfortable with paying. Of course it's been ages since I bought a new book anyways but I know that was a big factor in my stopping.
Kevin Yong:
--- Quote from: JVJ on February 22, 2011, 09:27:52 PM ---My point has always been that if we put a premium on white pages in original comics, shouldn't we try to strive for that "ultimate goal" in the scans? And it is my belief that NO comic book artist WANTED his or her art to be printed on yellowing pulp paper. That seems to be a nostalgia/fan thing that somehow (to me, anyway) defies logic. I know it's real, I'm just incapable of comprehending WHY, if we prize white pages in real comics, we don't prize them in scans.
--- End quote ---
I'm halfway in agreement here. I'm sure no artist intended their work to look smudged and discolored from fading pulp paper, and I definitely appreciate it when scanners apply color corrections to neutralize the obvious color cast from the scanned newsprint.
On the other hand, I also prefer it if a comic scan is able to preserve at least a slight background tint or texture from the paper (a very faint grey or off-white?), not because of any sense of nostalgia but for ease of reading onscreen. I feel there's a much harsher contrast in the glowing "white" of an LCD monitor screen than the subtle shades of "white" paper that would be prized in a printed book. (The glare from the glossy paper of modern comics tends to annoy my eyes for similar reasons.)
Obviously, this is not a "right" or "wrong" rule for scanning, it's just how my eyes react to colors onscreen. As they say, your mileage may vary.
-- Kevin
narfstar:
I was told that it actually cost more to get a book printed in newsprint than glossy. No idea why but the artist/writer of Sactuary http://www.comics.org/series/28442/ said.
John C:
Newsprint probably carries a higher expense because nobody does it. You need to find a shop that can fit you into its schedule and cover the start-up cost for their plant. If the industry changed, there'd be contracts that would drive the price to a competitive level, I'm sure.
As for the paper change, since I brought it up, I guess I should quickly run down the list of things I think went wrong when better paper became available.
- The bleed: Being able to draw to the edge of the paper has provided some innovative panel arrangements, but it's mostly responsible for two-page splash panels that convey nothing and/or inter-panel art that muddies the action. The splash panels then lead to decompression, the misguided idea that comic books are like movies and the way to show passage of time is to have many panels where people stand around not doing anything interesting (or for continuity of motion--no, no, I get how the pen got to the floor from the table!).
- Faux-collectability: Sturdier paper suggested the collectors' market by making them an "investment," making it responsible for millions of "gimmick" issues and covers, while anybody with half a brain realized that old comics were worth money because they were hard to maintain.
- Lazy art: Seems like every time in the last ten years I've opened a book that so much as mentioned outer space, we've Photoshopped the background of at least one panel to use NASA stock. The effect is invariably jarring, rather than smooth. A problem with Photoshop, maybe? Perhaps, but I don't think anybody would try for that kind of "quality" on crappy paper.
- Fussy art: Along the same lines as satellite pictures of Earth, we all remember the fiasco of Wonder Woman's new costume? The one that I'm pretty sure already never existed? My problem with it is that every dang bit of it is covered in scritchy-scratchy filigree. That sort of detail would never survive to the printed page without modern paper, so no artist would even try it. And that example only stands in for decades of "constipation lines" on the scrunched-up faces of characters and cross-hatching everywhere.
- Lack of restriction: It's been said that the Hulk would have been gray or brown, had it not been for the fact that he was impossible to print consistently that way, and I don't think he'd be an icon if he were. Today, artists (often) don't bother to worry about how something will look to the reader, because "what you see is what you get." And what you get is a lot of poorly-planned trash.
- Glare: Like Kevin, reading from glossy paper bothers my eyes and makes it hard to take the entire page in at once, since the glare shifts.
I think that's it...and not to take away from Jim's points, since he's got a different purpose in mind when he reads the scans.
(Now, let's never talk about computer coloring or using standardized fonts for lettering, OK...?)
Ami_GFX:
Funny that our local paper that comes out once a week with color printing and is printed on about 4 or 5 comics worth of newsprint at a cost of $1 and it isn't economically feasable to print comics on newsprint??
:-/
What I really miss in not just the newsprint but the widespread distribution and availibility of comic books. When I was a kid, the spinner racks were everywhere, every supermarket, drug and convenience store sold comics. Now, in the rocky mountain version of small town America where I live, the spinner racks have all disappeared, there are no comic books sold anywhere with the exception of digest size Archies--printed on newsprint at $4 a pop. I have an almost 3 hour drive to the nearest comic book store which will more than likely disappoint me in it's offerings.
And back to the subject of scanning, I got the hp 3970 and, just like I thought, it is a lot faster than the 3670 unless you try to scan at 2400 dpi--it took about 40 minutes to do one comic book cover and the jpeg was 150mbs. The ink dot patterns looked kind of psychedelic when fully magnified. At 200 dpi, it is something like 3 times as fast. I've scanned 2 comics so far and the ratio of straigtening to scanning time is way up. Once it's straight in the bed, the scanning takes no time at all. :)
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