Printing game manuals

Sometimes retro game boxes are missing stuff, such as game manuals. A solution is to print rather than trying to buy the game again just for a manual. I am not going to go through the whole process in detail, but in short it goes something like this:

1. Find a scan of the manual (using replacementdocs.com or similar service).
2. If the manual looks fine and is scanned “one page at the time”, skip to step 5 (double pages need to be separated).
3. Rip images out of PDF e.g. using PDF Image Extract.
4. Use (awesome!) ScanTailor to split pages, straighten pages, remove “dirt”, improve text readability etc.
5. Construct print layout with BookMaker.
6. Print (be careful to get the print order right on double sided “booklet” pages).
7. Print cover page on a stronger sheet (light cardboard or matte photo paper).
8. Cut.
9. Staple (hint! use a rubber eraser as a helper, watch this).
10. Read the manual and enjoy the game.

As an example, here we have Laser Squad (PC version) manual as…

• Scanned version of a manual found somewhere from the internets

• Pages separated and made looking much better

• Manual print version

Couple of photos about the cutting phase and the final “product”: