Any feedback appreciated before I make 93+ more mistakes... (remaining issues).
While I'd like to say you should run it through OCR, I can see from the content (which kicks f**king ass, btw) that OCR would most likely murder it. But 43MB per issue is nuts. So, my suggestions are:
- Don't use JPEG for 8-bit B&W text. JPEG was architected for continuous-tone images, not harshly-contrasting edges (like text). Use something lossless (preferably PNG) for text. Don't believe me? As proof, I used Acrobat on your PDF to extract the source JPGs for page 10 (there are two that make up the page) and I combined them in Photoshop, then saved out to a grayscale (8-bit) PNG. Total size of source JPGs was 781K, but the PNG as saved from Photoshop was 465K. For extra crunching, I let PNGGauntlet chew on that file for about 10 minutes and it got it down to 316K. (Since PNGGauntlet can batch files overnight, making the time it takes a non-issue, I usually include it in all of my processes.)
- Scan at 600 DPI halftone (that's 2-color B&W) for text-only pages without color. Not only will you completely eliminate "bleed" from the other side of the page, but it will compress better than anything else. You're archiving text; at that high a resolution (600 DPI), you don't need anti-aliased edges. Again, as an example, I scanned a text-only page without color or photos as 600 DPI and the resulting PNG saved out of Photoshop was 363K. Running through PNGGauntlet for 12 minutes shaved it down to 270K. That's four times your previous scanning resolution at 1/3rd the filesize (and it's perfectly clean and readable).
- Don't deliver the images in a PDF wrapper. I love PDF, but it's meant for text mixed with images, not just images. Try just a .zip (with no compression of course) with all the images.
BTW, if you would like the exact images I scanned, I still have them on the hard drive -- I'm not just making numbers up, you can see the test files for yourself. Just tell me where to email them.
--
Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
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