[X] My Assistant

I'm used to scanning poster boards and artwork, so I have no idea how to upload and scan a doujinshi.

What's the best way to scan a book, outside of taking it apart? I heard of a method that the guy behind the Zelda/Peach hentai doujinshi did, that doesn't damage the book, and I'm trying to perserve the book as much as possible.

I want to translate these books but still keep my doujinshi to drool and look at.

This post has been edited by Tofu delivery: Sep 3 2011, 02:17

Oddly enough, I happened to read a guide on this a while back. It covers both [www.wikihow.com] Scanlate and [www.wikihow.com] Cleaning so this shoulp help.

And on the off chance you can do translations and are looking to make some C/H, pm me ;D

From my own experience, the quality of the scan and the damage to the book are proportional to each other.

That means, the better you want the scan to be, the more damage the book has to suffer.

I only have experience scanning tanks, but I know a good deal of folks who have scanned doujinshi too.

First off, you need a decent scanner. I mean it - maybe it's my OCD but I couldn't get acceptable scans with my old one, so I bought one a certain Anonymous Scanner recommended to me.

About the scans itself - there are roughly two basic methods how to deal with that.

Either dismantling the book or putting the book flat on the scanner without taking it apart.

Putting the book on the scanner as is can give okay scans if you're willing to press down the book hard enough to make gutter shadow disappear (that's the part of the book between the pages, on a scan that will look dark). That means damaging the spine, essentially.

Doujinshi have fewer pages, so damage to the spine (if there is any - I never had a doujinshi in my hands) might be negligible.

The other method, taking it apart, will result in greater quality scans overall. It basically comes down to your preferences in quality compared to damage to the book. Not saying un-debinded books can't give you good scans, but there is always a trade-off.

If you want to debind, don't TEAR off the pages from the spine! I know some people who do that, and it may have worked in their case, but it produces spine rips and may even rip the pages in half.

Happened to me once... not fun. I prefer the hairdryer method, basically you melt the glue in the spine until the pages come off. It's really easy, and no damage done to the pages except the obvious debinding of the book.

Oh yeah, and you might want to use black paper and put it behind the page you scan so you avoid bleedthrough (that means you can see the other side of the page shimmering through, which is sometimes hard to remove in postprocessing - and it looks kinda awful)

The guide to post-scan processing Shanko gave you should point you in the right direction.

Here, have another two:
[www.ruinevil.com] http://www.ruinevil.com/rawr/editguide/1.html
[senbonzakura.kageyoshi.net] http://senbonzakura.kageyoshi.net/

Thanks for the feedback!

@Super Shanko: I was busy translating a hentai game, but in since class is starting soon and my laptop is MIA with all my notes, I might pm you when I have some free time. I never did translations in a group before or doujinshi lol.

Thanks for the feedback!

@Super Shanko: I was busy translating a hentai game, but in since class is starting soon and my laptop is MIA with all my notes, I might pm you when I have some free time. I never did translations in a group before or doujinshi lol.

Good to hear (about the free time part). If you decide to try one, this guide should be most helpful.

I wonder if we should make this sticky, as a help for scanners?

Every now and then I recommend to some scanners that they check this section for guides.

This post was prompted by my lastest suggestion to https://e-hentai.org/uploader/ceroxon who is scanning a lot of OMG dojins for us. Is there something you can aid him with? I was personally wondering why some of his scans are ~700x1000 and some are at ~1000x1400. Should we advise people to use an even higher resolution?

This post has been edited by Red_Piotrus: Nov 1 2011, 19:57

Generally, when I scan my doujins, I scan them at 600dpi, clean it then resize them to 300dpi & 1600h.

A method I came up when trying to scan my doujins without damaging the spine was by using another book somewhat thicker than the doujin I'm scanning, place that on the side I'm scanning and place a larger and heavier book on top of that book and have it overlap the spine itself. That way the top book will press down on the spine cleanly but not all way (and thus damaging the spine). After I'm done scanning, the spine end of the doujin tends to be curved to one side, but that's not something a stack of heavy books on top of the doujin for a week won't cure.

This post has been edited by lightshader: Nov 2 2011, 06:38