[Typeset] Ten Typesetting Tips

shinwei · June 30, 2006, 10:02 PM

Hi all, figured I'd share just a little bit of advice with you all today. Here's what I believe to be the ten most important things to pay attention to while typesetting:

1. Invest extra effort into centering the text.

This is super duper important. Always be extremely hard on yourself to center the text in the bubble. Take the little bit of extra time to use Photoshop's ability to NUDGE (arrow keys) the text. Make absolutely sure the text is centered in the bubble. If it isn't, then anyone who looks at your page will have the immediate impression that you did a shoddy job.

2. Leave some white space inside the bubble.

A bubble should never be "filled to full capacity" by the text. Leave some space. Look at some HQ scanlations if you don't know what I'm talking about. Text looks way better if it's not set to completely fill up the bubble. I'll post some picture examples later.

3. Draw text boxes, don't just click.

In Photoshop, when you select the Type tool, you can either click on your document and start typing, or click and drag to draw out a text box in which to type. For manga bubbles, you will primarily want to be using the latter.

4. Aim for the diamond shape.

The text block inside your bubbles should be thinner at the top and bottom, and widest in the middle. Make use of your text box's wrapping, but don't rely on it 100%. You WILL have to hit the Return key to send some text to the next line manually to achieve the diamond shape better sometimes.

5. Choose the right font.

Wild Words is the default font for dialogue, as it was made popular by DontHurt of MangaProject back in the day, but that doesn't mean it's the ONLY font you can use. It's a great font, and if you use it no one will complain, but if you either don't want to use it or don't have access to it, www.blambot.com has some great fonts for you to use! For more complicated stuff, I like to use Mouth Breather when the speaker is really weak or injured, and I will choose out special fonts for special attacks, but for the most part I stick with my dialogue font.

6. Smooth Anti-Aliasing for talking, Strong Anti-Aliasing for shouting.

As a general rule of thumb, all text inside round bubbles should be smooth, and all text inside spiky bubbles should be round. It does make a big difference, trust me!

7. Use punctuation properly!

Don't hate the period. Use it at the ends of sentences. Failure to do so is just unprofessional and bad-looking. If you disagree with me now, I guarantee you that your hatred for periods will be outgrown quickly once you start using them.

8. Use Italics sparingly!

Yes, I know most dialogue fonts have only three settings: Normal, Italics, and Bold-Italics. That doesn't mean you should be using Italics for shouting though. Never - EVER typeset an entire bubble to have Italics. It just looks bad. I use Italics only for special keywords in the manga. I use Bold-Italics when I want to highlight one specific word. Note: in my translations, I put words that I want bold-italicized in CAPS.

9. Text Width and Text Height are VERY useful!

Japanese text runs top to bottom, so that means a lot of the time you will find the bubbles to be a lot taller and thinner than you want them to be, especially during shouts. You will find that it adds quite a bit of flair to a shout when you set the text height to 120%-150%, just don't forget to also adjust your text's vertical spacing accordingly. Also, sometimes when typing around in bubbles, you will come across a really annoying line that's just too damn wide and you really can't do anything about it. Feel free to adjust the width of that line to 90%, but I don't recommend going down further than that.

10. Have fun!

Typesetting is definitely a way to express creativity. You DO have a lot of creative freedom when typesetting, and you really can get really artistic with it. Especially with the shouting, you can totally knock yourself out making crazy shouts with all the neat stuff Photoshop can do with the text. If you feel like you can make something look really cool, go for it.

destinator · July 01, 2006, 05:20 AM

Quote:

www.blambot.com

Thanks for the awesome side...just downloaded like 10-20 interesting fonts xD

nytrogyn · July 10, 2006, 03:40 PM

Quote: Shinwei

7. Use punctuation properly!

Don't hate the period. Use it at the ends of sentences. Failure to do so is just unprofessional and bad-looking. If you disagree with me now, I guarantee you that your hatred for periods will be outgrown quickly once you start using them.

Yea XD (lol Shinwei)

_________________________________________________

11. Take a break.

Typesetting for an extended period of time puts a huge amout of strain on the eyes, as you have to be very precise in text placement. Take 10 minute breaks every once in a while, and continue on later.

Siedhr · July 14, 2006, 05:53 PM

Great tips, thank you. Started using them and I thought I'd drop by and show you my appreciation.

kyubisharingan · September 16, 2006, 08:59 AM

awsome tips, thanks

~~GGpX~~ · December 28, 2006, 07:29 PM

Quote: Shinwei

3. Draw text boxes, don't just click.

In Photoshop, when you select the Type tool, you can either click on your document and start typing, or click and drag to draw out a text box in which to type. For manga bubbles, you will primarily want to be using the latter.

4. Aim for the diamond shape.

The text block inside your bubbles should be thinner at the top and bottom, and widest in the middle. Make use of your text box's wrapping, but don't rely on it 100%. You WILL have to hit the Return key to send some text to the next line manually to achieve the diamond shape better sometimes.

8. Use Italics sparingly!

Yes, I know most dialogue fonts have only three settings: Normal, Italics, and Bold-Italics. That doesn't mean you should be using Italics for shouting though. Never - EVER typeset an entire bubble to have Italics. It just looks bad. I use Italics only for special keywords in the manga. I use Bold-Italics when I want to highlight one specific word. Note: in my translations, I put words that I want bold-italicized in CAPS.

I disagree with these points and I wouldn't recommend them.

3- I hate this. My reasoning is this: It's a rush job. By "rush job," I mean a faster way around the actual work. That means mistakes can be done and are sometimes overlooked (Or even go unnoticed). Common example; You make the your "box" for text, and you have a word that is longer than the box. Let's say "Extraordinary". The box will automatically split the word onto the next line. No problem with that, but, it's where it splits the word that becomes a problem. Extraordinary is not split extraord*inary. Another problem with this would be that the text in the bubbles often look mis-positioned and you go back to the base method; The click and separate yourself method.

To me, this is really a way to typeset faster without learning anything else useful for scanlations. You do the first method, "click on your document and start typing" (By the way, here's my tip for any typesetter: Never type out the sentences yourself. Always copy-paste them from a .txt file.) you learn, with the proper counseling of course, a Quality Checking method. And that is to check if the text in bubbles are centered.

4- Okay, now, I don't really disagree with this, I just wouldn't make this my priority. This would be my second priority as a typesetter. I personally try to get more or less equal lines. If I could get this, great. If not, I'll go for the diamond shape.

Also, I do agree with having the first and last line as being thinner. If the top line is bigger than the middle line, it looks ridiculous.

8- Totally disagree. Italics are perfect for shout bubbles. They are showing the emotion of the character. Whether it is anger, love, sadness, etc. Don't tell me you talk the same way regularly as when you're completely pissed off. There's a difference between the two. A strong Anti-Alias just doesn't cut it. ou should use Faux-Italics. Using regular Italics could be ugly for some people, (I find it fine, but Faux-Italics is much better) but I find it fine either way.

Also, you're over-rating the Strong Anti-Alias. It's sometimes hard to notice the difference between Smooth & Strong. It sometimes looks like you're using regular talk in a shout bubble. And this makes the typesetting boring. If anything, use Faux-Bold.

---

Outside of those 3 points, good tips.

Allashandra · December 29, 2006, 03:15 AM

Thanks for adding your input GGpX. It's always nice to hear how different people think about things like typesetting.

I would have to disagree with one of your points though. I use the text box method and I think the method is fine. I can easily change the size of the text box to suit the bubble and the text I am placing in it after the fact. I can also reposition the text box as needed. I also use the information contained in Nytro's typesetting tutorial to change the height and width of my fonts within the text boxes to better fit the text bubble. In my opinion mistakes can be made no matter what method you use it is up to the typesetter and QC team to keep these mistakes to a minimum. I think each person has there own style and have developed ways that work best for them and that is in part what this forum is all about. Sharing our knowledge so that others can see if that will work for them.

I totally agree with you on not typing out the sentences. Typos are far to easy with that method and if the script has been properly proofread then the typesetter could be introducing unintential mistakes that way. I always copy and paste the text.

As for Italics I have heard a few different opinions on these both where to use them and where not to use them. For me the jury is still out. There are many ways to emphasis special text and once again I think when a typesetter starts to get good they sort work out the way that works best for them. I don't think either of you are wrong I just think you have different opinions on what looks good.

Reaver Reload · February 01, 2007, 03:47 AM

One particularly important thing I must stress, is when you do typesetting is to try and avoid the hyphens ( - ) as much as possible. I appreciate that some scanlators take extra precaution to avoid them, yet you can't avoid using hyphens all the time. However, as a general guide, I try to avoid them as much as I possibly can in our Zarosaki releases.

Nothing is more irritating to a reader to read the following broken text:

Akatsuki stri-
kes again! Th-
e nightmare
returns!

It flows so much better when readers are reading the whole words with no orphans, for example, the above becomes:

Akatsuki
strikes again!
The nightmare
returns!

While I can appreciate that not everything can fit inside the speech bubble, toying around with different words with the same meaning or giving a slightly smaller font size or rearranging a few words can make all the difference. Still, there are just some cases where there's no luck at all, such as Orochimaru's name being massively large for most speech bubbles.

A lot of people simply drag the text tool over the bubble which creates a confined space for the text to be entered in. While this is easy to confine the text to the speech bubble and just type away, it's a haven for hyphens as Photoshop automatically leaves the hyphens on. If you want to disable hyphens and still use your text boxes, simply untick the Hyphenate box in the Paragraph tab.

It's a little bit nazi, but it's been one of my only pet peeves for a while now, reading broken text when a simple alignment is all it takes.

venicia777 · February 01, 2007, 04:01 AM

Reaver has such a great point. At times it is so annoying when one tries to read words separately just because a part of it is on the next line. And it is soo easy for such to introduce spelling mistakes too.

Great tips Indeed!!!

qwan3356 · February 01, 2007, 07:39 AM

Quote: venicia777

Reaver has such a great point. At times it is so annoying when one tries to read words separately just because a part of it is on the next line. And it is soo easy for such to introduce spelling mistakes too.

Great tips Indeed!!!

Yea i agree too, BTW Thanks for the Tips

godmode · February 13, 2007, 08:10 PM

question for you typesetting Gods

is vertical text ever a good idea for just talk bubbles? or do you just use small normal text

Siedhr · February 14, 2007, 02:40 AM

Quote: godmode

is vertical text ever a good idea for just talk bubbles? or do you just use small normal text

I don't like vertical text. It's very hard to read. I always go for smaller horizontal text, except for vertically elongated bubbles of screams and such (like Aaargh), where the effect would be lost if the font size were too small.

June 30, 2006, 10:02 PM	#1
shinwei Translator 英雄メンバー / Eiyuu Menbaa / Hero Member Join Date: Feb 2006 Age: 24 Gender: Posts: 567 Country:	[Typeset] Ten Typesetting Tips Hi all, figured I'd share just a little bit of advice with you all today. Here's what I believe to be the ten most important things to pay attention to while typesetting: 1. Invest extra effort into centering the text. This is super duper important. Always be extremely hard on yourself to center the text in the bubble. Take the little bit of extra time to use Photoshop's ability to NUDGE (arrow keys) the text. Make absolutely sure the text is centered in the bubble. If it isn't, then anyone who looks at your page will have the immediate impression that you did a shoddy job. 2. Leave some white space inside the bubble. A bubble should never be "filled to full capacity" by the text. Leave some space. Look at some HQ scanlations if you don't know what I'm talking about. Text looks way better if it's not set to completely fill up the bubble. I'll post some picture examples later. 3. Draw text boxes, don't just click. In Photoshop, when you select the Type tool, you can either click on your document and start typing, or click and drag to draw out a text box in which to type. For manga bubbles, you will primarily want to be using the latter. 4. Aim for the diamond shape. The text block inside your bubbles should be thinner at the top and bottom, and widest in the middle. Make use of your text box's wrapping, but don't rely on it 100%. You WILL have to hit the Return key to send some text to the next line manually to achieve the diamond shape better sometimes. 5. Choose the right font. Wild Words is the default font for dialogue, as it was made popular by DontHurt of MangaProject back in the day, but that doesn't mean it's the ONLY font you can use. It's a great font, and if you use it no one will complain, but if you either don't want to use it or don't have access to it, www.blambot.com has some great fonts for you to use! For more complicated stuff, I like to use Mouth Breather when the speaker is really weak or injured, and I will choose out special fonts for special attacks, but for the most part I stick with my dialogue font. 6. Smooth Anti-Aliasing for talking, Strong Anti-Aliasing for shouting. As a general rule of thumb, all text inside round bubbles should be smooth, and all text inside spiky bubbles should be round. It does make a big difference, trust me! 7. Use punctuation properly! Don't hate the period. Use it at the ends of sentences. Failure to do so is just unprofessional and bad-looking. If you disagree with me now, I guarantee you that your hatred for periods will be outgrown quickly once you start using them. 8. Use Italics sparingly! Yes, I know most dialogue fonts have only three settings: Normal, Italics, and Bold-Italics. That doesn't mean you should be using Italics for shouting though. Never - EVER typeset an entire bubble to have Italics. It just looks bad. I use Italics only for special keywords in the manga. I use Bold-Italics when I want to highlight one specific word. Note: in my translations, I put words that I want bold-italicized in CAPS. 9. Text Width and Text Height are VERY useful! Japanese text runs top to bottom, so that means a lot of the time you will find the bubbles to be a lot taller and thinner than you want them to be, especially during shouts. You will find that it adds quite a bit of flair to a shout when you set the text height to 120%-150%, just don't forget to also adjust your text's vertical spacing accordingly. Also, sometimes when typing around in bubbles, you will come across a really annoying line that's just too damn wide and you really can't do anything about it. Feel free to adjust the width of that line to 90%, but I don't recommend going down further than that. 10. Have fun! Typesetting is definitely a way to express creativity. You DO have a lot of creative freedom when typesetting, and you really can get really artistic with it. Especially with the shouting, you can totally knock yourself out making crazy shouts with all the neat stuff Photoshop can do with the text. If you feel like you can make something look really cool, go for it. __________________ [size=12pt]<br />Want to give back to the community? Visit The Academy.[/size]

July 01, 2006, 05:20 AM	#2
destinator MH Senpai MH中毒 / MH Chuudoku / MH Addicted Join Date: Mar 2006 Gender: Posts: 5,891 Gallery: 553 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips Quote: www.blambot.com Thanks for the awesome side...just downloaded like 10-20 interesting fonts xD __________________

July 10, 2006, 03:40 PM	#3
nytrogyn 上級員 / Jyoukuuin / Sr. Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Gender: Posts: 364 Gallery: 4 Country:	Eleven Typesetting Tips Quote: Shinwei 7. Use punctuation properly! Don't hate the period. Use it at the ends of sentences. Failure to do so is just unprofessional and bad-looking. If you disagree with me now, I guarantee you that your hatred for periods will be outgrown quickly once you start using them. Yea XD (lol Shinwei) _________________________________________________ 11. Take a break. Typesetting for an extended period of time puts a huge amout of strain on the eyes, as you have to be very precise in text placement. Take 10 minute breaks every once in a while, and continue on later. __________________

July 14, 2006, 05:53 PM	#4
Siedhr 英雄メンバー / Eiyuu Menbaa / Hero Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Bucharest Age: 30 Gender: Posts: 1,296 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips Great tips, thank you. Started using them and I thought I'd drop by and show you my appreciation. __________________ L33t userbars by aznguy28 The Stray website Strays: How We Learned To Stop Whining And Do Scanlations By Ourselves - Read it and come join us. This is my sig. Worship my sig.

September 16, 2006, 08:59 AM	#5
kyubisharingan 有名人 / Yuumeijin / Celebrity Join Date: Feb 2006 Age: 18 Gender: Posts: 2,558 Gallery: 8 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips awsome tips, thanks __________________ ~japFlap cleaner~ ~KS's DeviantART~ もし僕と別れたら、一番いい人と別れるから、よりいい人を選ばなくちゃいけない。まだ。。。日本語習ってる

December 28, 2006, 07:29 PM	#6
~~GGpX~~ Banned 英雄メンバー / Eiyuu Menbaa / Hero Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Age: 21 Gender: Posts: 1,043 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips Quote: Shinwei 3. Draw text boxes, don't just click. In Photoshop, when you select the Type tool, you can either click on your document and start typing, or click and drag to draw out a text box in which to type. For manga bubbles, you will primarily want to be using the latter. 4. Aim for the diamond shape. The text block inside your bubbles should be thinner at the top and bottom, and widest in the middle. Make use of your text box's wrapping, but don't rely on it 100%. You WILL have to hit the Return key to send some text to the next line manually to achieve the diamond shape better sometimes. 8. Use Italics sparingly! Yes, I know most dialogue fonts have only three settings: Normal, Italics, and Bold-Italics. That doesn't mean you should be using Italics for shouting though. Never - EVER typeset an entire bubble to have Italics. It just looks bad. I use Italics only for special keywords in the manga. I use Bold-Italics when I want to highlight one specific word. Note: in my translations, I put words that I want bold-italicized in CAPS. I disagree with these points and I wouldn't recommend them. 3- I hate this. My reasoning is this: It's a rush job. By "rush job," I mean a faster way around the actual work. That means mistakes can be done and are sometimes overlooked (Or even go unnoticed). Common example; You make the your "box" for text, and you have a word that is longer than the box. Let's say "Extraordinary". The box will automatically split the word onto the next line. No problem with that, but, it's where it splits the word that becomes a problem. Extraordinary is not split extraordinary. Another problem with this would be that the text in the bubbles often look mis-positioned and you go back to the base method; The click and separate yourself method. To me, this is really a way to typeset faster without learning anything else useful for scanlations. You do the first method, "click on your document and start typing" (By the way, here's my tip for any typesetter: Never type out the sentences yourself. Always copy-paste them from a .txt file.)* you learn, with the proper counseling of course, a Quality Checking method. And that is to check if the text in bubbles are centered. 4- Okay, now, I don't really disagree with this, I just wouldn't make this my priority. This would be my second priority as a typesetter. I personally try to get more or less equal lines. If I could get this, great. If not, I'll go for the diamond shape. Also, I do agree with having the first and last line as being thinner. If the top line is bigger than the middle line, it looks ridiculous. 8- Totally disagree. Italics are perfect for shout bubbles. They are showing the emotion of the character. Whether it is anger, love, sadness, etc. Don't tell me you talk the same way regularly as when you're completely pissed off. There's a difference between the two. A strong Anti-Alias just doesn't cut it. ou *should* use Faux-Italics. Using regular Italics could be ugly for some people, (I find it fine, but Faux-Italics is much better) but I find it fine either way. Also, you're over-rating the Strong Anti-Alias. It's sometimes hard to notice the difference between Smooth & Strong. It sometimes looks like you're using regular talk in a shout bubble. And this makes the typesetting boring. If anything, use Faux-Bold. --- Outside of those 3 points, good tips.

December 29, 2006, 03:15 AM	#7
Allashandra MH Senpai 英雄メンバー / Eiyuu Menbaa / Hero Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Gender: Posts: 980 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips Thanks for adding your input GGpX. It's always nice to hear how different people think about things like typesetting. I would have to disagree with one of your points though. I use the text box method and I think the method is fine. I can easily change the size of the text box to suit the bubble and the text I am placing in it after the fact. I can also reposition the text box as needed. I also use the information contained in Nytro's typesetting tutorial to change the height and width of my fonts within the text boxes to better fit the text bubble. In my opinion mistakes can be made no matter what method you use it is up to the typesetter and QC team to keep these mistakes to a minimum. I think each person has there own style and have developed ways that work best for them and that is in part what this forum is all about. Sharing our knowledge so that others can see if that will work for them. I totally agree with you on not typing out the sentences. Typos are far to easy with that method and if the script has been properly proofread then the typesetter could be introducing unintential mistakes that way. I always copy and paste the text. As for Italics I have heard a few different opinions on these both where to use them and where not to use them. For me the jury is still out. There are many ways to emphasis special text and once again I think when a typesetter starts to get good they sort work out the way that works best for them. I don't think either of you are wrong I just think you have different opinions on what looks good. __________________

February 01, 2007, 03:47 AM	#8
Reaver Reload Artists of MH 上級員 / Jyoukuuin / Sr. Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Gender: Posts: 258 Gallery: 5 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips One particularly important thing I must stress, is when you do typesetting is to try and avoid the hyphens ( - ) as much as possible. I appreciate that some scanlators take extra precaution to avoid them, yet you can't avoid using hyphens all the time. However, as a general guide, I try to avoid them as much as I possibly can in our Zarosaki releases. Nothing is more irritating to a reader to read the following broken text: Akatsuki stri- kes again! Th- e nightmare returns! It flows so much better when readers are reading the whole words with no orphans, for example, the above becomes: Akatsuki strikes again! The nightmare returns! While I can appreciate that not everything can fit inside the speech bubble, toying around with different words with the same meaning or giving a slightly smaller font size or rearranging a few words can make all the difference. Still, there are just some cases where there's no luck at all, such as Orochimaru's name being massively large for most speech bubbles. A lot of people simply drag the text tool over the bubble which creates a confined space for the text to be entered in. While this is easy to confine the text to the speech bubble and just type away, it's a haven for hyphens as Photoshop automatically leaves the hyphens on. If you want to disable hyphens and still use your text boxes, simply untick the Hyphenate box in the Paragraph tab. It's a little bit nazi, but it's been one of my only pet peeves for a while now, reading broken text when a simple alignment is all it takes. __________________

February 01, 2007, 04:01 AM	#9
venicia777 有名人 / Yuumeijin / Celebrity Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 3,247 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips Reaver has such a great point. At times it is so annoying when one tries to read words separately just because a part of it is on the next line. And it is soo easy for such to introduce spelling mistakes too. Great tips Indeed!!!

February 01, 2007, 07:39 AM	#10
qwan3356 英雄メンバー / Eiyuu Menbaa / Hero Member Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Ashburn, VA Age: 25 Gender: Posts: 1,071 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips Quote: venicia777 Reaver has such a great point. At times it is so annoying when one tries to read words separately just because a part of it is on the next line. And it is soo easy for such to introduce spelling mistakes too. Great tips Indeed!!! Yea i agree too, BTW Thanks for the Tips __________________

February 13, 2007, 08:10 PM	#11
godmode 初心者/ Shoshinsha / Beginner Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Canada, eh Age: 26 Gender: Posts: 9 Gallery: 1 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips question for you typesetting Gods is vertical text ever a good idea for just talk bubbles? or do you just use small normal text __________________

February 14, 2007, 02:40 AM	#12
Siedhr 英雄メンバー / Eiyuu Menbaa / Hero Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Bucharest Age: 30 Gender: Posts: 1,296 Country:	Re: Ten Typesetting Tips Quote: godmode is vertical text ever a good idea for just talk bubbles? or do you just use small normal text I don't like vertical text. It's very hard to read. I always go for smaller horizontal text, except for vertically elongated bubbles of screams and such (like Aaargh), where the effect would be lost if the font size were too small. __________________ L33t userbars by aznguy28 The Stray website Strays: How We Learned To Stop Whining And Do Scanlations By Ourselves - Read it and come join us. This is my sig. Worship my sig.