Scans Daily Resource Exchange

[schmevil.insanejournal.com]

Thanks to icon_uk 's One Perfect Moment theme, SD 2.0 has seen its busiest week yet, with +200 posts, and 51 posts on Tuesday alone! (So far. There's still time to get your OPM posts in - post people, post!) Round of applause for icon_uk , everybody.

One Perfect Moment brought a bunch of new (and nearly new) posters out of the woodwork, so I thought now would be a good time to do a resource exchange. Veteran SDers! Here's your chance to share all your hard-earned scanning, posting and general Scans Daily knowledge. *points to soapbox* Climb up.

• What image hosts do you recommend?
  
• Which ones should we stay away from?
  
• What hosts are good for adult content?
  
• Any scanning tips for noobs?
  
• Any image editing tips for noobs?
  
• What are some good places to find public domain comic scans?
• What are some good places to find comics on the cheap?
• What does every noob need to know about Scans Daily?

And, you know, whatever other burning questions SD can come up with.

Comments

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

One thing I would mention...

When scanning 200 dpi( or even 100) work just great for most comic art. From what I can tell many people are using 600. This just means a bigger file,and more bandwdth. If you on a dodgy wi-fi or such,it just takes longer for stuff to open.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

I typically scan full pages at 600dpi, then crop out the whitespace and make it 700 pixels wide. This is a pretty decent size and the scan won't really take much space.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

*nods* I've found resizing to 750 px wide works well for me.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

I scan at 200dpi, then use paint.net (http://www.getpaint.net/index.html) (open source graphics package) to crop the edges, autobalance the colours and then shrink it to 700pixels across, saving it as a jpg at 66% quality, which gives me a good balance of good colours and decent compression.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

I would like to ask for good adult image hosting suggestions. The one I used at LJ (Chipszone.net) won't let me post stuff to InsaneJournal. I get Forbidden errors. :(

[besamim.insanejournal.com]

I used pict.com for the one adult post I've done so far. Images displayed as they should, and they're still there weeks later. Hope this helps.

Picture format advice:

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

BMP:
Do not use these. These are uncompressed pictures and hella bloated. They'll take a long time to upload, and download.

PNGs:
PNGs are great if you want to archive photos or show game screenshots. The compression is great for archiving. But when it comes to posting stuff, the filesizes will just be TOO BLOATED for most people to download properly. A well-compressed JPG image can be much smaller than a comparable PNG image.

On the other hand, greyscale PNGs are pretty decent in size and compression, if saved properly (this depends on the program used). Stuff scanned from manga volumes or black and white books can be saved like this for maximum quality, but the file size will still be pretty high.

JPG:
The higher the quality, the larger the file. The lower the quality, the lower the file, but you'll see more artifacts in the image. Most of the scans I post here are set to 75% quality (or less). Image editing software usually has a preview feature which lets you adjust the quality and see the final product before saving the image.

They're pretty good for black and white / grayscale images too.

GIF:
These can only have 256 colors, so they're not really very good for posting scans. Avoid using this.

---

When it comes to webcomics, the authors usually upload heavily optimized pictures so you can just save them and repost them without issue most of the time.

Re: Picture format advice:

[yaspis.insanejournal.com]

GIFs, however, are nicely lightweight for B&W work and won't bork the quality too much. :)

[04nbod.insanejournal.com]

* What image hosts do you recommend?

Tinypic, while they don't have a bulk uploader if its not porn it will stay up longer than on photobucket which measures bandwidth. On a site with a lot of traffic it can take up a lot of your monthly allowance. Tinypic auto resizes your images for this site if you use the 800px option

* Which ones should we stay away from?

imageshack, takes ages to load and goes through 2 pages before getting directly to the full size image if you use thumbnails

* What hosts are good for adult content?

me, porn, neva!

* Any scanning tips for noobs?

Sometime putting a hard book on top of the scanner will help a better quality image. Scans from trades need you to hold the book in place. If the picture doesn't look good try making it smaller, the dots get closer for a more refined image.

* What are some good places to find comics on the cheap?

I get back issues from ebay, they are quite cheap and if you buy multiple items sellers can discount the P&P. I have yet to find a good subscription site for the UK

* What does every noob need to know about Scans Daily?

Scans from even the most random stories are appreciated for any reason. We aren't just about the sex.

[besamim.insanejournal.com]

What are some good places to find public domain comic scans?

Lots of good stuff, in a variety of genres, at Golden Age Comics Downloads (http://goldenagecomics.co.uk/). It's a forum that allows registered users (registration is free) to download and upload public domain Golden Age comic book issues. The mods are stringent about verifying that all posted comics are in fact public domain. The only drawback is that there are no online previews of any issues; you have to download them to read them.

Examples of interesting titles I've found here are Pep (where Archie started out); Crime Does Not Pay; early issues of Captain Marvel and related titles; Young Romance; and old newspaper strips such as Little Nemo.

[scarletts_awry.insanejournal.com]

Ooh, that sounds excellent. Thanks for the heads up.

[darklorelei.insanejournal.com]

Oh, sweet. Thanks for the link.

[zegas.insanejournal.com]

I find that scanning comic pages at 300 dpi and then resizing them at 72 dpi (anywhere from 8 to 11 inches wide) is the best in terms of sharp and faithful results. I don't know much about public domain scans, mostly because I scan all my own stuff.

I've purchased the majority of my comix collection for the past 10 years from "Roger's Time Machine" in New York City. If any of you are ever in town, it's on 14th Street and 7th Ave. You'll find the best stuff for the cheapest prices. If you live in NYC already: Go. NOW!

[tanetris.insanejournal.com]

I'd like to directly contradict you. Looking at your most recent post (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/323815.html), while it is fairly readable for the most part, and I have certainly seen worse, I'd much rather have more like this one (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/496863.html).

It depresses me slightly how far back I had to go to find something I could consider a really good example.

[zegas.insanejournal.com]

You got me on that one. I was using a different scanner for the majority of that specific post. However, the Daredevil "Marvel Age" cover is from my usual scanner and is very crisp (I re-sized it with the same specifications as the rest). That is my ideal scan.

Some other points are a matter of personal style and taste: I like to keep the color of old newsprint as opposed to bleaching it out and I like a typical comic sized page to somewhat fit on a screen without having to scroll too much to view it. My past posts have varied in that regard, though.

Burning question. Sorta.

[tanetris.insanejournal.com]

This may not be exactly the kind of question being looked for, but I am curious and I think it's related enough.

Would people be interested in some sort of scans_daily IRC channel? Just a place to hang out and chat, both about comics and in general. Or is there one already that I don't know about? Assuming there isn't already one and there is interest, anyone have particular preferences on what IRC network?

I was discussing with a friend the other day the subject of IRC communities, as the one she and I had met in has gone distinctly downhill over the past several years, over a large number of splits and dissolutions and reformations and just the general evolution of people leaving and being replaced... Anyway, it occurred to me that the most interesting and entertaining group of people I know on the internet right now is none other than you fine folks here at scans_daily. I'm sure I'm not the only one around here who thinks the comment threads are as good, if not better than the actual comic scans a lot of the time.

So, interest? Opinions? Ideas? People telling me this has already existed for years and I just don't know about it?

Re: Burning question. Sorta.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

My previous internet experience says: HELL NO. IRC only promotes drama.

But that's just my opinion. We already have NOScans for discussion. *shrugs*

[ashez2ashes.insanejournal.com]

The only thing I can think of is to recommend not posting thumbnails that you have to click on to get the larger picture. Some people will go to the effort, but not many. You'll get a lot less people replying overall in your post.

[darklorelei.insanejournal.com]

And if you must do thumbnails, don't do Imageshack.

[faile_neume.insanejournal.com]

Definitely motto to that. I hate imageshack and have not read things I want to read just because I don't want to deal with imageshack.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Heh, it's been great fun, I've never started a theme before, and whilst I will cheerfully glom any credit, plaudits should be shared with proteus_lives, who was the inspiration for the theme!

At the moment I'm still using my livejournal gallery for images as I have room there, and it's easy to manage, with no apparent problems with bandwidth.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

162 posts tagged with the "One Perfect Moment" tag in the space of seven days! Awesome! :)