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[meppi]

Up until now we have always used the 1920 pixel width setting as our highest quality setting.
Scanning these magazines usually gives you an image of around 2600-2700 pixels.
After straightening the pages, cropping them and editing them so they look nearly brand new, you end up losing 100 200 pixels depending on the magazine.

So the maximum resolution ends up being a bit under 2600 for the most part.
As how we were using 1920p for the past 2 years, it's easy to see how losing around 900p per page is quite a lot.
Naturally we chose that setting to balance out the power and performance of systems as well as HDD capacity and download speeds. So at the time 1920 was definitely the best option as it was quite the step up from 1200p scans most others were using.

But technology never stands still, so we can't either.
This is why from today we have started to remaster the original fully edited PSD files of our scans to create brand new 2560p versions of them. Some magazines might be re-released at something like 2400p, depending on the series original page size.
Other series will have to remain as they are since we don't have the original hi-res files.

We realize that 2560p might be overkill for use one some systems right now.
Actually my personal screen resolution on my laptop is 1440x900 at this point, until Retina MacBooks are made at least.
So I will be using the tablet versions on my laptop myself for the time being.

This is why we release 3 different versions of each magazine barring exception.
The "Max-Rez" version will be 2560p for the most part.
The "tablet" version will be resized to 1600p and will retain the same image quality settings.
The "iPod&iPhone" version will be resized to 1024p and have a bit more compression added to get the size significantly cut down for easy storage.

Some magazines will keep their 1920p "Hi-Rez" version since we don't have higher resolution versions and can't upscale the scans without destroying their image quality.

Even if you don't have a means to enjoy the "Max-Rez" versions right now, we encourage people to grab them anyway.
They will no doubt become of use in the future and as developments in these past weeks have proven, you never know when it might become harder to download them due to a variety of circumstances.

More importantly, these versions are the definite versions which will stand the test of time since we are using the highest possible settings for 300dpi scans.
Just as a reminder, these aren't just upscanned versions of old JPG files.
These are taken from the lossless files and barely have any downscaling applied to them to turn them into JPG files.

So far the series that have been updated and are now available in their "Max-Rez" glory are the following:

Computer & Video Games

Dreamcast Magazine

MAXIMUM The Video Game Magazine

[meppi]

The latest sets of magazines that have been updated in 2560p are:

Mean Machines

MegaTech

N64 Magazine

[meppi]

The final sets have now been released at 2560p, so grab them while they are hot:

OSSM

Sega Pro

Super Play

[retromagfan]

I got the new ipad and re-loaded my old PDF and CBZ files from outofprintarchive onto it (I have not downloaded he new max-rez files).  Only problem is that they use up about twice as much storage as before.  For example, a 30MB PDF now takes up around 60MB of storage space on the new ipad.  It was only 30MB on the ipad 2 and laptop.  Is this likely due to the higher resolution screen?  Anyone else experiencing this?  I'm using Cloudreaders. 

[meppi]

That's a really weird issue.

Perhaps Cloudreader uses the same kind of import protocol that ComicZeal uses, where it re-scales all the pages so they fit their "standard" way of displaying them.
So it could be that any files imported to your reader is being upscaled times 2, which would make sense since the size is exactly double that of before.

This is one of the big reasons I switched to ComicGlass as it leaves your files exactly as they are and do not mess with the quality in any way.
It also gives you a lot of different display options compared to some other portable readers.

[retromagfan]

Thanks.  I tried ComicGlass.  No such problems, and I like the interface and filing system a lot better too.  So I'll stick with it.  You're right, it is a weird issue.  Would be interested to hear if anyone else has the same problems.  I work near an Apple Store and went in to ask about it.  They weren't able to explain.

[meppi]

The customization options of ComicGlass along with the quick loading times and lag-free navigation really put it on top for me.
As well as the way it handles the files itself.
Don't know why certain readers are created to "optimize" your files to some predetermined arbitrary quality.
Seems to me they look at it in a way that the user isn't capable of determining which would be the best possible option.
That, or perhaps they figure that all cbz/PDF/etc files are of a certain standard size that wouldn't fit the display you're about to put them one. Which makes little sense if they don't look at the original file sizes to begin with. :-/

Really liked Comicbooklover as well at first, but it doesn't seem to get any updates, at least not the portable version.
Still using the OS X version on my laptop as it works extremely well on there.