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The original was posted on /r/datahoarder by /u/AndroidAssistant on 2024-06-23 04:05:06+00:00.

I’m trying to digitize my father’s ~500 comic book collection before his birthday in August so he can read them on his tablet. He gifted them to me a while back because, while he wouldn’t admit it, his eyes are starting to go, and he couldn’t enjoy them anymore. With the tablet he can zoom in as far as needed so I know he would love to revisit the comics once they are in digital form. Everything is in pristine condition with sleeves and backers, but there is nothing insanely valuable in the collection. He has a couple that are worth something, but most sit at >$10. That said, it would crush him if any were damaged so the scanning method must be non-destructive.

What I have tried:

Czur Aura Pro

• Super quick, but random cropping and glare for days, even using the side lights. I tried using it with the official light box, outside the box, with 1-5 additional lights, with only external lights at every angle known to man, in a diffusion light box, with polarizers, etc. The only thing that worked 100% of the time was scanning while sitting on my back porch on an overcast day. I opened a ticket with their support and the response was “Make your room light bright enough, but do not have direct light shining on the book.”. They didn’t address the cropping issues.

Epson Perfection V600

• Epson Scan - Impressive for OEM software but inconsistent and changing the framing is a pain unless things are at perfect right angles.
• VueScan - Sometimes it decides just not to scan, sometimes it scans and the image is black. When it does scan it does fine, but the auto skew is ~90% accurate which may as well be 0 because I have to adjust every single picture.
• Silverfast - I was surprised at how much better the scans look, but the scans take 2-3 times as long as the Vue or Epson software. Also I have to take a prescan every time I move the page?

At this point I’m ready to hire a service if anyone has any suggestions, but I would really prefer to do the scanning myself because I plan on at least completing the series that he has, and probably expanding on them. I do have an R10 and an M50, so I could try some sort of diybookscanner.com solution, but that is a lot of effort for something that may or may not have different results.