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Author Topic: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?  (Read 8451 times)

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Offline Yoc

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #15 on: December 14, 2011, 10:33:58 PM »
I'm with narf on that!

I love Snard's offer of the original raw scans.  Re-saving jpgs never looks good like photocopies of photocopies.
But there are cases where frankly the originals could use improvements and in Jon and the MLJ books, it's been years between new MLJ scans.  It seems like this is all we are going to get.  It's great he added missing pages on some which made them essential to add to DCM, but he's also done a nice job of adjusting some scans that had pretty dark, muddy problems.  I like them myself but members will always have the choice of which they want.  If were were to dump the originals it would be wrong.
More choice is always better than less.  If people really think they can do a good job on a sub-par scans go for it.  That's just my opinion.  Everyone is entitled to their own.  But if an original scanner has made it known they do not want someone monkeying with their work I suggest we honour their wishes.

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #15 on: December 14, 2011, 10:33:58 PM »

Offline The Quill

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #16 on: December 15, 2011, 07:56:25 AM »
I must admit to being very surprised and impressed by this forums passion for this medium of collecting, which I applaud.

For the record my last two 'editing' efforts have been with the original scanners permission and I can assure you all that I would never knowingly rework any scans without prior permission.

When I first joined this wonderful community I did publish a post asking if remastering was acceptable and a couple of members gave me the thumbs up to rework some of their titles, and my only intention was for people to enjoy the finished product.

I fully understand members have their preferences and will always ensure I will never rework publications without the relevant members endorsement.

With sincere intentions

Q

Offline srca1941

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #17 on: December 16, 2011, 06:50:09 PM »
Re: MLJ, I can upgrade a few to 300dpi versions. When I did my count for my "50th" scan, I had forgotten that I also did Jackpot Comics #1. I can upgrade that one pretty easily as long as I didn't scan it at 150dpi. I also have a couple of early Top-Notches, including #7, an issue of Zip, and a Roly Poly that reprints another Zip issue.

[Edit:] The bad news, Jackpot #1 is only 150 dpi scans. The good news is I can rescan it sometime soon.

-Eric
« Last Edit: December 16, 2011, 06:56:13 PM by srca1941 »

Offline Yoc

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #18 on: December 16, 2011, 07:43:39 PM »
Sounds GREAT Eric!  Looking forward to them someday.
:)

Offline JonTheScanner

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #19 on: December 16, 2011, 07:58:03 PM »
Re my edits of the MLJ scans.  My original intention was to add missing inside covers and missing pages from fiche scans the latter of which Ontology (sigh I miss him) did for me. While doing this I enlarged some pages and modified colors. Since the scans were for me and a few other people, I felt there was no reason not to do so. Obviously I personally prefer my edits or I wouldn't have bothered to do them.

At various times others in the scanning community asked for these scans and I provided them my c2cizations. Anyone who wanted the original pages only had to merge my added pages with theirs.

About a week ago, Yoc found these scans on DC++ (not my share) and asked me for the rest -- which I've started to provide. As I no longer have the original scans, I really have no way of telling now which pages I've added or changed. So if you want just the added pages, you'll have to extract them yourself.

Offline Yoc

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #20 on: December 16, 2011, 08:35:13 PM »
Thanks Jon, I've been trying to list when your scans have pages added (now c2c) and which pages were missing for those that only want them.

Offline builderboy

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #21 on: December 23, 2011, 07:53:58 PM »
I've missed this conversation by some days, but feel that I should add my voice.  I am not in agreement with many of you, I will warn you up front.

My feeling is that the comics we hold in our hands came from artists, but passed through the hands of somebody in the production process who may or may not have had much care about the quality of end product as much as they should, the printer.  Depending on the publisher, the issue, or even the copy of the book, there might be mis-registrations, poor attention to ink levels or pressure on the plates (resulting in smears, blobs, or worse), crap on the plates preventing defects in color fields, paper trims out of square or askew, etc.  Many of these defects obscure the art, particularly the mis-registration of the plates in detailed areas of the drawings.

Say what you like about the pure art of preservation of cultural artifacts.  I understand those arguments.  If a sloppy printer screwed up a nice page of comic art, and I can do something about it, I chose to do it.  My releases are, after all, just scans...not originals.  They aren't precious. That differentiation took place the second the book hit the scanner, however much or little 'editing' I do.  All scans are copies, differing in exposure and color balance from the source.

In my way of thinking, I am trying to make the page look as much as it can as if the book were well printed and well preserved. Some of you will shudder to read this.  I felt that this is worth stating, however, so that you didn't mistake my silence for agreement on this issue.

Offline Yoc

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #22 on: December 23, 2011, 08:27:53 PM »
Thanks for sharing BB.
What you didn't mention is many of your scans are 'raw' on release and might or might not be edited down the road.
Did you want to say if you were willing to let others edit your raw versions?

Offline builderboy

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #23 on: December 24, 2011, 08:15:47 AM »
Thanks, Yoc...good point, and better, a reminder to an important point I missed.  What I should have mentioned was that JVJ taught me the good sense to make all of my edits in adjustment layers, leaving the raw scan untouched.  I have all of these files, and I have always thought that the raw scans are something that we, as a community, should be archiving someplace.

And, no, I have no problem with anyone doing whatever they please with my work, with the caveat that they credit the source of their stuff appropriately, source of the book, source of the scan.

For instance, I will shortly make available Jungle Comics 138 fully edited. I understand that, for some of you, this is end product will be less than what you truely desire.  I don't have a problem with that.  What I would love to do is make my Photoshop files available to the community so that anyone could do with them what they wanted.  In a similar vein, I would love access to others' raw scans to do with them what is pleasing to my eyes.  I don't know that we have the resources available, but I have a hard drive full of stuff that I think folks would like to get their hands on.

Offline Yoc

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #24 on: December 24, 2011, 09:44:39 AM »
Hi BB,
That's a great offer!
I believe OtherEric has offered his PS files and perhaps another scanner as well.  The ol' memory ain't the best at time.  *sigh*

Offline John C

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Re: "Enhancing" comic scans--yes or no?
« Reply #25 on: December 24, 2011, 01:04:41 PM »
Before Captain DJ got cranking on putting DCM in place, one idea I looked at was building something like a torrent tracker (a list of where to download, more or less), but for cloud uploads and curated.  The only back-end I could find that struck me as usable was FileSocial, which might be worth a look for files like this.

About the only problem I could see was that it was geared towards Twitter (and wants to post the link to your account).  But other than that (or if you create a throwaway upload account), it uses Amazon's storage, has no type limits, supports up to 50MB (probably not spectacular for original scans), and free, which is nice.

Here was my test case at the time, the copy (from here) of Air Fighters #4, if you want to check out the interface and download on something safe:

http://filesocial.com/7cfapg5