The Scanlation Process
The scanlation process comprises of mainly five important steps. While the details of each step may differ from group to group, but the basic procedures are the same:
1. Scanning
The first step is scanning the manga, thus transforming the printed page into an image which can easily be edited using computer softwares. The scanner, in this case refering to the person in charge of scanning, is often the one that purchases the manga, which is generally in the form of either a manga magazine or a tankobon. The main advantage of scanning using a manga magazine is that it can provide latest chapter of a series. However, since most manga magazines use low quality, newsprint-grade paper and cheap printing process, those scans are often of poor quality. Tankobons, on the other hand, provide far superior scans, at the cost of waiting until they are actually available for purchase. Since most tankobons are simply compilations of the serial magazine chapters that have been published so far, the wait can range anywhere from a couple of months to more than a year. Because of this, a group might release an early low-quality version based on a manga magazine and later follow it up with a high-quality tankobon-based version. However, this approach is labor and resource intensive, so most groups stick with a single source.
In order to get scans of better quality, many scanners debind the magazine or tankobon, i.e. separate the individual pages from the spine. (Methods include cutting the spine carefully, microwaving the whole book or ironing the spine, to loosen the glue.) This allows the pages to lie flat against the scanner bed, preventing the formation of shadowing artifacts that would normally occur in the middle due to the presence of a spine. The advantage is that it allows better scanning of two-page spreads, so that they can more easily be fused during the editing step.