>>3738
>What is the best way to scan physical manga volumes?
Quite simple: Laying each page or pages flat into a good quality scanner. The scanning rig you linked is made for books that are not worth destroying (for historical/monetary/sentimental reasons), which is rarely the case for manga, especially from this century. Distortion of perspective for books is nowhere near as an issue as for images (from a manga) so I don't think it really applies. The obvious and more expensive answer is the concrete one you're looking for.

>>3739
Thanks for the response. I figured the book scanning rig wouldn't be a good way of scanning anything with images, but it's good to have confirmation. Elsewhere I only got back and forth arguments about whether removing the bindings is really necessary, or no response. I'm trying to import some things I'd like to see available so I'll start looking in second hand scanners, if I can find any. One thing I did find out from my asking this question elsewhere, is that there are two different types of scanners. CCD scanners and CIS scanners. Most cheap flatbed scanners or those embedded into printer combos are CIS scanners, and are the cheaper type. CCD scanners use better camera sensors to produce an image which is of better quality and less prone to distortion from distance of the object from the glass surface, due to uneven pressure, along with some other artifacting things I think. Brand new CCD scanners run around $100, so I am definitely gonna look used. Manga can be dirt cheap if bought second hand from what I've seen so far, and shipping isn't 'too' bad if opting for surface mail and a lot of things are combined into one order.

Post edited on 19th Nov 2018, 5:54pm

A pet peeve of mine is the formats most scanners save their images in. Remember well that:
- Color pages must be saved as JPG and never at 100%. 95% is a good balance for most software. That JPEG quality slider won't overcome the physical limitations of scanning; and
- Black & White pages in a properly levelled (to remove paper texture and page bleed), reduced bit depth PNG. Aim to scan at a resolution high enough that you can see the discrete halftone dots to allow for level+cut without loss in image quality. See attached image for a good example. (4441x6213, 2 color greyscale PNG, 723KB. Note the small filesize.)

>>3758
those are some really ugly jagged edges on the hiragana. I wonder if it was actually printed that way or if it's due to the reduced bit depth.

Seems like there's trouble happening over at mangadex, wonder how this will affect scanlations in the future (if it kicks the bucket) since it has become a hub of sorts for scanlators in recent years.

>>3993
It really does suck that I can't go to a scanlator's website/blog or IRC channel and download. (Or better yet, utilize RSS.) As of right now, most of them either directly upload to MD or have some Discord faggotry.

>>3993
They're upgrading the site, according to them.

>>3995
Yeah, looks like it'll take up to a month. Seems like they were hacked not too long ago.

>>3994
I suppose there are both advantages and disadvantages to their existence, still a better option than aggregate sites nonetheless.

>>3993
That's unfortunate. Mangadex is a pretty decent manga database/online reader. The only problem I have with it however is when scanlators ONLY distribute their scans on mangadex and provide no way to download them. Although MD's online reader may be superior to others, having scans stored on your hard drive to be read at any time and not having to deal with page loading will always be greater than relying on a server somewhere to have content available for you 24/7. I understand the convenience but if there was a series I wanted to check out, it'd be so annoying having to go on MD only to find that it's having another temporary outage, especially with what's happening to them right now. Also, CDisplayEX alone makes downloading scans worthwhile.

>>3997
If you wish to download things, you can always use applications like Tachiyomi to download whole chapters from websites like Mangadex and read them offline. I think Tankobon does the same on Windows.

>>4000
>only on windows 10
dammit, I'm still on windows 7 :(

I'm getting manga withdrawal..

>>4002
Do you have a title you wish to read? I might have it.

>>4003
Thank you for your offer but there's nothing specific I'm looking for. There are a number of manga that I have been following but some of the scanlators for these don't really have a site of their own or none that I'm aware of so I simply have no idea if there are any new releases. Are there anything you'd like to recommend however?

>>4004
Remember to check mangaupdates (and give this userscript a shot, https://github.com/loadletter/mangaupdates-urlfix). But yeah, I'm in a similar boat.

>Are there anything you'd like to recommend however?
I've been concentrating on other hobbies of late, but Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia and Shinju no Nectar have been ongoing manga that I've been following since their inception. With the first, I can upload the currently scanlated volumes to /ddl/, and the latter's scanlator has his own website: https://finemangscans.wordpress.com/category/shinju-no-nectar/

>>4005
Oh thank you, that's a useful script to have. Somewhat unfortunate but it seems like a lot of scanlators that doesn't have their own sites are using either discord or dumping their scans on sites like 4chan/reddit.

Ah I assume you're also the guy who originally posted about it on the recommendations thread. Thanks for the recommendations I'll look into them sometime.

>>4006
If they didn't backup then they knew their work was TRASH and deserved to be lost forever.
I have 5 backups for every piece of half-finished fanfiction I've wrote both paper and text documents on hardware, cloud, external and internal drives.
Big Manga sites die every five years without fail. When will they learn?!

>>4006
If they didn't backup then they knew their work was TRASH and deserved to be lost forever.
I have 5 backups for every piece of half-finished fanfiction I've wrote both paper and text documents on hardware, cloud, external and internal drives.
Big Manga sites die every five years without fail. When will they learn?!

I don't like MangaDex's new API for the fact that, when requesting a chapter's metadata, one must make a separate request to obtain the name of the groups that released it. Yeah, you can request the metadata of groups in bulk via just one request, but it's still kind of a hassle compared to the previous APIs: there's more state to track internally.