Cleaning Cleaning RawParadise Raws in GIMP

[Hayate-kun Denwa]

Okay, thanks to Raw-Paradise and their watermark of evil, I'm finding it incredibly difficult to clean the latest chapter of Hayate No Gotoku. Granted, I'm normally a scantalator and I usually just wait for someone else to post the clean RAWs without the watermark, but seeing how no one else has done it, I thought I might take it upon myself to do it.

The problem is, well the two problems are I really don't know how to clean myself and I'm using GIMP. I would appreciate any help from people who have dealt with this watermark to give me any advice on what to do. I'm running GIMP 2 right now and please no suggestions on getting Photoshop, I have heard those before and I keep telling people I don't have the money for it and GIMP suits my needs as a scantalator.

 

[Ju-da-su]

Like this? http://mangahelpers.com/downloads/details/80902 -_-"

Seriously, don't waste your time cleaning that stuff. I might not know much about cleaning, but I can tell, there's no use trying to waste time cleaning that raw. You'll need a very good redrawing skill to take out those watermarks and still get the raw at fair enough quality (taken that RP raws aren't that good in quality to start with, watermarked or not), which actually isn't easy to get. I'm not totally sure, but isn't it a lot harder to redraw using GIMP than Photoshop as well? Clearly, since you're not intended to get Photoshop and said it yourself that you don't know how to "clean", quit even thinking of trying to redraw it right now.

No one else has done it, eh? Seriously, you never notice that the raw without watermarked DO come, just not as fast? What you need there isn't a skill to clean that crappy raw, but patience. :S

 

[DrPepperPro]

an kinda easy way to get rid of most of it is to:

1: DL photoshop (free, but buy it later blah blah blah)
2: Ok you can probably do it in GIMP, so I'll give general guidelines then.
3: Make a copy of the original pic and make it much larger size, maybe 5000px height. Level that alot, such that the raw paradise text becomes black.
4: Select the black text either with magic wand selector, or an option that selects. Then use a lasso selector to get rid of any excess black parts that may have been selected. And it's better to select a little past the text than inside it. The resizing was so that this selection can be more accurate.
5: Make a new layer, and select with some kind of selecting tool the area around the text. It may be hard to see it on some parts, so you can open other pages to use for this also.
6: Now you have - A layer that encompasses the text, and a layer that encompasses the whole area affected by the watermark.
7: Select the text layer (ctrl-click in photoshop), and level the original, probably around [20, 0.80, 120] to make the text in white areas disappear, and the text on gray/black areas to match with the raw itself.
8: Select the other layer and then remove the text layer from it's selection (ctrl+alt click in photoshop), then level that on the original layer by probably around [15, 0.40, 255].
9: Now you can copy/drag the 2 layers to other pages, line them up, then repeat the same leveling.


Now that get's rid of most of it, to get rid of the rest, redraw in gray areas, black brush in black areas, white brush in white areas. Also burn and dodge tool can help. Here's an example:
1 - Original watermark
2 - After the selected leveling
3 - After some redrawing

Or just don't waste your time; do it crappily and wait for volume raws.