Advice on cleaning and fonts

I thinking of redoing History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi some of the chapters that use denoise
i'll like to get Advice on fonts and what size should be the final size be here the one I cleaned and level no denoise.

http://s10.postimage.org/jzavkjgkp/IMG_0014.png

compare with

http://www.mangainn.com/manga/chapte...promise/page_6

If it's advice what you're asking for, advice ya shall receive. However, pardon me if I come to a conclusion you won't like to hear. But anyway, here goes:

Image size:

Anything between 1100px and 1600px height is standard. It mostly depends on your cleaning technique and the raw you are working with. I'm assuming you downloaded public tankobon raws for this one; those are usually either 1400px or 1600px height. Some resizing is recommendable since it helps smoothen out edges and so on in case you did any manual work on the pages (like dodging, burning, redrawing of any kind, etc), so go with 1200px or 1400px respectively, would be my suggestion.


Cleaning technique:

First off - you have to split the pages into separate files. It's much nicer on the eyes to follow the events on a single page than having two (unrelated ones, it's not a spread-page) like that. I understand that it's an extra hassle and that that is simply the way the raw was scanned, but it's definitely worth the effort. The way it looks right now makes me remember certain companies' "professional" online readers and shudder in deep agony.
The other issue you got is leveling. As far as I can tell from the very small image you provided, you level the whites too strongly. What this leads to is light grays, such as the ones in the bottom panel on this page:

http://www.mangainn.com/manga/chapte...promise/page_5

- becoming so bright that one can barely see them - which is loss of quality. What you can do is try messing about with "Exposure" (under "Image -> Adjustments, in Photoshop that is), making the page darker overall before you level it. It helps preserve light tones somewhat, though my experience with that method is mostly limited to a combination with a light denoise that enhances lines instead of blurring them, but ah... let's just leave it at this. Your page is too bright, the one on that manga reader looks better to me, though that might be partly because the image you provided is really small. (I like repeating myself, yes.)


Fonts:

First, get your basics right. Readability is key to typesetting, thus: use black, not some dark gray color for your fonts. Use center aligning, not left aligning. Use caps only, at least for standard talking bubbles (though that's more of a general preference than a rule).

Try going with something like CC Wild Words or one of the blambot fonts.

Don't use italics for everything, reserve it for something like thought bubbles. Use bold-italic for shouting bubbles (the spiky ones that usually end with an obscure amount of exclamation marks) - or alternatively, find a whole new font to use for shouting bubbles. DaFont has many great free fonts waiting for you.

Try to center the text better. Your vertical centering isn't too bad already, but horizontally, you should aim to put the text exactly in the middle of the bubbles, not in the middle hypothetical bubbles, which seems to me is what you did. Work with the bubbles that are actually there.


There's a lot more of advice to give on this matter, but I'm running out of time, so here's my conclusion:

The available scans aren't bad enough to bother redoing them, especially since you seem to be a beginner to scanlating. But if you're still keen on replacing some of the bad scans of this series, I'd recommend you look through the series and find magazine raw scanlations that have been strongly overdenoised and abused. Scans like this exist all throughout the series, and they are the ones that need replacing - not tankobon raw scans that look okay enough.

They're far from being perfect, I agree, but they aren't horrible enough for any online manga readers likely to agree to replace the scans they currently have with future scans you might produce; and without that you won't be able to spread your new scans and improve the quality that's out there.

An exception would be their typesetting, which *is* horrible enough to be worth replacing, but since you're new to that, it's not a given that you'd do a better job at it anyway.


Well, regardless of what you decide from here on - good luck with it. =]

Thanks for the advice and font that I should use.