#book scanning

[solradguy]

SOL RADGUY SCANNING GUIDE

Covers:

What you need to scan a book.

How to do it.

How to do it better.

What to do now that it's scanned.

This is a long post with images.

WHAT YOU NEED //

A scanner.

I use an Epson Perfection v39. It's old but it was affordable (~us$60 in 2016 money) and it's reliable. You need something that can scan in color, greyscale, and black & white modes at 300 DPI. DPI (Dots Per Inch) is the resolution the scanner outputs the scan in. Anything over 300 DPI for art/comic scans is a little overkill, imo. However, if you're planning on printing physical copies of your scans, consider scanning them in at 600 DPI for something around printer paper sized, or 1200 DPI for posters. These files will balloon in size considerably with the increase in DPI. It may be worth it buying an extra hard drive just for managing work in progress scan files if your computer's local hard drive is smaller than 500gb.

Black construction paper.

Construction paper that's black. Put this behind the page you're scanning and it prevents page bleed through. More on how this is used below.

Masking tape.

Not really necessary, but useful for mapping out the ideal scanning area on your scanning bed. Speeds things up.

Art/photo manipulation program.

I use Clip Studio Paint EX ver. 2.0 and Photoshop CS5. Your program should have a clone tool and basic image manipulation such as cropping and rotating. Free alternatives are GIMP and Photopea.

OPTIONAL:

White inspection gloves.

These are thin cotton gloves used to handle sensitive things such as historical photos, coins, and old books. Highly recommend investing in a cheap pack if your book has glossy pages. Don't have to worry about cleaning up greasy fingerprints in post with these on.

Bone folder.

This is a flat plastic (bone, historically) stick used to crease pages in book-making. I find having one is useful for carefully pushing pages flatter to get cleaner scans. If your book has tense binding this tool might prove useful.

Heat gun, hair dryer, or a stovetop + big skillet.

Tools for de-binding books in order of most to least useful. I use a heat gun. More on how these are used two sections down.

X-acto knife.

For skinning. It's sharp, it's a knife.

Non-abrasive document cleaning pad.

If you buy a book with glossy pages that's greasy as hell consider picking one of these up. It's a fabric pouch full of a soft powder that gently picks up and removes dirt and oils from paper. I've got one by Lineco and used it on the Dengeki PlayStation magazine scans. Some art stores will carry these but I had to buy mine online.

HOW TO DO IT //

Remove the dustjacket, obi (informational band around the book), and any other loose materials inside of the book (mark what pages those materials were found on). Clean the pages as best as you can with the doc. cleaning pad or just wiping it down gently with a dry paper towel, then get your black construction paper and stick it behind the page that's going to be scanned. If your book is really big, remove the lid on your scanner. It's only going to get in the way.

Try to put as much pressure on the spine as you safely can and hold down the parts your hand can't reach with something heavy-ish. I usually use this paint water jar. Scan in PNG or TIFF format at 300 DPI. For art books and manga use either the color or greyscale modes. Raw text (novels, etc) benefits from the black & white mode.

Here's the raw scan:

Artworks of Guilty Gear X 2000-2007 scans very nicely despite being perfect bound (bound with glue) and rather stiff, but it's still an old book and has some minor damage that will need cleaned up in post later, as well as any dust that I missed cleaning off my scanner bed beforehand. The gutter is on the left. Note the black specks of dust in the right corner and in the big white area, and how you can't see any of the image printed on the other side of this page due to the black construction paper preventing bleed through:

HOW TO DO IT BETTER //

SKINNING BOOKS. A scary thought... But sometimes necessary. Manga volumes have really tight binding that makes them almost impossible to get clean scans of in a traditional flat scanner bed.

You will need either a heat gun, hairdryer, or a big skillet and a stovetop for this part. I use a heat gun. Warm the spine of the book CAREFULLY over the heat gun while gently pulling back on the cover until it pops free from the glue. A hairdryer will be used the same way as a heat gun, just slower. Turn it to the hottest setting.

For the skillet method, heat it up until it's just a little too hot to touch (BE CAREFUL; don't actually touch the skillet with your bare hand). Then hold the book spine-down on the skillet and peel the cover off that way. This method can burn your book very easy because it's harder to gauge how hot the skillet is. Take your time.

Now that the cover is off, use the same method to remove the pages one by one. Make sure to keep them in the right order. Sometimes there will be a thick glob of binding glue that can be sliced off with the X-acto knife. Watch your fingers.

Scanning loose pages is mindlessly easy and there're ways to make it even more mindless. Tape black paper to the top of your scanner lid and use masking tape to mark where exactly on the bed to put the pages so you can get them all in about the same spot. Makes lining them up later in the digital cleanup stage a piece of piss. Don't be a fool and think to use regular tape or duct tape. Cleaning adhesive off glass is a nightmare.

Time to put on some Zeppelin and zone out for about an hour. Remember your page order.

My setup and the raw scan:

I number my pages how they are in the book with the cover, obi, and inside cover flaps usually being zeroes with a letter following it ("00a-dustjacket-FRONT, 00b-dustjacket-BACK, etc":

Your art program should load in the file as a layer with the file name. Load in about 10 to 20 at a time (if your computer can handle it), line them up, clean the dust, adjust colors, sharpen image, then save them in a new folder separate from the raws. Use the clone tool to clean up dust. If you sharpen the image, remember that less is more.

WHAT TO DO NOW THAT IT'S SCANNED //

Upload it. I put all my (non-doujinshi) scans on Archive.org and include a .PDF of the scanned book with smaller resized pages and a .ZIP of the full size pages as loose files. This is optional, don't feel obligated to do both because it really adds a lot of extra work saving the files in two different sizes. Having the full size files is more valuable than a compressed .PDF, though, if you're unsure about which to go with.

For smaller files (<25mb total as a .PDF or .ZIP) you could put them on Neocities too. Neocities doesn't really like the idea of people using their site as a file sharing host so while I don't really recommend using just Neocities, it's definitely something you could do if coding a website sounds fun to you. Here's the archives page on my NC site for an example of how you could code/organize your own archive, if you wanted: solradguy.neocities.org/archives

If you scan something and wanna get more eyes on it, feel free to slap my @ somewhere on the post or you can email it to me (junkyarddogmkii [at] gmail [dot] com ) and I can reblog it and share it with the lore server crew.

Here's a link to the Guilty Gear scans masterpost: https://solradguy.tumblr.com/post/701138089295364096/comprehensive-guide-to-unofficial-guilty-gear

[baravaggio]

one of my favorite facts about gekko hayashi (artist who drew gay erotica) is that he was straight guy who pivoted from sci-fi & monster stuff to illustrating for gay & bdsm mags at like 50 years old because he wanted to expand his artistic horizons, and compensated by lack of lived experience by setting up a phone line for gay men to call in & recount their stories so he could illustrate them...legend

[nostalgicfun]

Love from the Very Hungry Caterpillar, 2015

[shisasan]

1 September, 1925 Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov

[sekaiichi-happy]

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, 82 yen stamps

[milksockets]

cara barer in paper: tear fold rip crease cut - black dog publishing (2009)

[frankenisms]

The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe by Satty (1976)

[orangesinwinter]

metropolitan tokyo

scans from Japanese Graphics Now! (2003)

[scurviesdisneyblog]

Visual development by Paul Felix for Tarzan (1999)

[dangdfeng]

I don't remember if I made a post about this before but I had scanned the entirety of The Art of Dreamworks Trolls World Tour and put it on my archive.org collection last year. The Trolls franchise has kind of blown up since then so I want to alert new fans since this particular book is quite a hard find

[shirleyschmidts]

[uhcasual]

All illustrations for The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Russian Edition Exclusives, Volume 5

Finally got my hands on the russian истари/Istari publication volume 5 for Mo Dao Zu Shi, so here are high resolution scans of the art exclusive to this particular edition. The art here portrays events that occur in the post-storyline extras.

Full resolution available for download here (tumblr compresses images a little)

Illustration Artist: Marina Privalova (Baoshan Karo)

[Vol. 1] - [Vol. 2] - [Vol. 3] - [Vol. 4] - [Vol. 5] (part 1)

[lionfloss]

The Monterey Coast, 1980

[shisasan]

29 August 1925 Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov

[rachamemories]

Megillah cases Left to right: Ioannina, Greece ca. 1900; Aleppo, Syria ca 1875; Ukraine ca 1850; Turkey ca 1875

[milksockets]

the book as art: artists' books from the national museum of women in the arts - krystyna wasserman (2011)