Cleaning Need some advice!

[tenshime]

I am working on a shoujo manga, and I've never really done any cleaning before. I'm completely new to all this and not so sure if I'm doing a good job. So, I'm gonna be asking some stuff.

This is something I worked on recently and I think it's kinda over-leveled... My eyes love darker and bolder lines, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. Please give your comments and advice.

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And after staring at it for a few minutes, I'm kinda feeling that the 'wow' in the page below is too small and should be bigger. Opinions and help?

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Raw:

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... How to credit a raw provider? (this seems like a very extremely silly question ><)
I got my raws from here and I'm not so sure how to credit.

And two more questions to bother you with. How long does it generally take for a cleaner to clean one page or a chapter?

And, how detail do you clean a page? I am aiming for HQ, so do I remove only the visible dust and specks and leave the others or remove (mostly) all of the miniscule imperfections?

Thanks for taking the time to help me. I only use Photoshop CS5 and nothing else. As I mentioned, I am very new to this and only know the very basic of basics, so please bear with me

 

[hatsuharupeace]

I am working on a shoujo manga, and I've never really done any cleaning before. I'm completely new to all this and not so sure if I'm doing a good job. So, I'm gonna be asking some stuff.

This is something I worked on recently and I think it's kinda over-leveled... My eyes love darker and bolder lines, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. Please give your comments and advice.

Spoiler

And after staring at it for a few minutes, I'm kinda feeling that the 'wow' in the page below is too small and should be bigger. Opinions and help?

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Raw:

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... How to credit a raw provider? (this seems like a very extremely silly question ><)

So I'm going to break up your questions and answer them all individually, rather than one whole block of text.

First off, shoujo manga is a lot easier to clean than perhaps shounen or seinen series, where there is a lot of detail involved in those genres. In shoujo, not only are the RAWs mostly from tanks/volumes, which means better quality paper and therefore better quality RAWs, there is a bit less intricacy involved with cleaning it.

First, there is no need for any form of denoising program; most shoujo RAWs only require some sort of light leveling, and maybe a bit of surface blur if the page is quite dirty with dust in order to make it easier to clean. So yes, you're kinda on the right track in terms of how you're cleaning the RAW, so keep up the good work!

In terms of your leveling, it's fine. The first page is slightly overleveled (pg 09), you can tell in the middle panel, where the gray pattern on the cat is nearly blacked out, so have a look at that, and try it again, don't go as crazy on the black slider or the gray one either. For your second page, pg 10, looks fine as well. Some people may say it's too dark, some may say otherwise, but as a cleaner, you've gotta make your own judgement for yourself. What I'd suggest is to have a look at other shoujo scans, grab the RAW for that series, and compare cleans, your's to theirs, and see how they compare, it's a good way to get a rough gauge on what could be deemed too dark or too light.

Your typesetting is mostly fine, there are a couple of issues with the shape of the text in certain bubbles, like in the last panel of pg 09, and the last panel of pg 10, the last bubble. Then again, I'm also a bit picky, and things like this come with practice! Try and get a diamond shape with your text as much as possible or as close to that kind of shape, and definitely experiment with some other fonts as well, like the "wow..." and "I can't sing..." bubbles.

Key thing now is to keep practicing and experiment definitely, but you're on the right track so far! Good work!

I got my raws from here and I'm not so sure how to credit.

Just list the name of the website, so raw1st on your credit page.

2And two more questions to bother you with. How long does it generally take for a cleaner to clean one page or a chapter?

Again, it depends on the type of genre, the detail involved on a page, and the amount of pages. For pure cleaning, it could take from 5 to 30 minutes, with redraws, sometimes 30 mins to an hour, it really depends. How long did it take for you to clean those two pages?

And, how detail do you clean a page? I am aiming for HQ, so do I remove only the visible dust and specks and leave the others or remove (mostly) all of the miniscule imperfections?

Detail is in the eye of the cleaner. Practice makes perfect, and in that practice will you come to terms with what a HQ clean demands of a cleaner. HQ also counts the typesetting and redrawing, so improving and practicing those aspects will definitely improve your overall quality, so always strive to be better, one of my mottos when I was cleaning.

Thanks for taking the time to help me. I only use Photoshop CS5 and nothing else. As I mentioned, I am very new to this and only know the very basic of basics, so please bear with me

Again, practice practice practice. Different RAWs, different methods, different fonts, do whatever you can, because in the long term, all that will ever do is improve your skills.

 

[zidane]

Hatsu already mentioned some things about cleaning and I don't have much time right now anyway, so I'll keep this short and about only two things.

1. Typesetting

The most important rule in typesetting, rule #1, can be expressed with just one word: Legibility.
People need to be able to read the scans, obviously enough. That limits the kind of fonts you can and cannot use, but the main point is that you have to worry about the font size at all times. This is what I found most difficult with your scans - I had to look closer to make out what the text says and I shouldn't have to.

Another thing is using certain styles for certain circumstances. You have to make it clear with your typesetting when the characters are thinking, shouting or talking normally. You can achieve that by either having a different fonts for those things or you simply put your font in italics when the characters think and in bold italics when they are shouting.

Your centering was quite good for a beginner, you shapes will only improve through practise anyhow, so just keep the two main points I mentioned above in mind and you'll do okay.

Below you can see a quick version I did next to yours.

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2. The other thing is the way you save pages. I noticed the page I downloaded was over 1mb big, and knowing that most beginners make this mistake, I figured I'd mention this.

Save pages using photoshop's "Save for web & devices" option under "file". Use png-8 as the file format and don't go over 48 colors for this kind of page, probably even 16 would be enough, but it's always better to have too many than too few. It's gonna reduce your file size dramatically.


PS: I just noticed another question of yours. It takes around 8-30 minutes on weekly magazine raw pages, which are usually pretty bad quality and require the use of many filters, though on average I'd say 10 minutes, the 30 mins ones are rare. When it comes to tankos it depends on how much you actually have left to do. Some raws are all nicely cropped and just need leveling, others have a terrible gutter shadow and require a lot of additional work, or you need to cut the pages into two because the raw was scanned in double-pages. Nice raws can take as little as 1 minute per page and you can script most of the process, mean raws can take 15 minutes and more per page.

I'm not taking redrawing into account in any of this, because that of all things mainly depends on each individual series you work on. One Piece has only very few redraws, except cover pages which are a different story entirely, while Naruto sometimes has them on every other page, mainly because Kishimoto's flashback style is putting text on art while Oda prefers providing bubbles for the characters even in their flashbacks. And redrawing, depending on the complexity, may well take anything between 2 minutes and 2 hours.

Point is, don't worry, it really does take a lot of time to produce quality work - for anyone. That's also the reason why there are who groups of people, and only rarely individuals, working on Edited Mangas.

 

[tenshime]

Thank you soo much. I was confused with the stuff and your advice really helped me lots. I'm very lazy and do stuff real slow so pages like these take about 10 mins or so. I will definitely do something with the size of the file

And I would like to ask for advice again, if you don't mind ><
I need help on the contents page of this manga, Chocola no Mahou. It's split into two and when I tried to connect them, I realized that the size is a bit different, so should I put them together or leave it as it is? And lastly, I'm guessing that I need to make the font a bit bigger on the page with the chapter titles. I'll improve it on that later, so other than the size, can you please offer more advice and help? The writing seems plain and I'm not so good at spicing things up. Thanks agaiin

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[Ana Clara]

Thank you soo much. I was confused with the stuff and your advice really helped me lots. I'm very lazy and do stuff real slow so pages like these take about 10 mins or so. I will definitely do something with the size of the file

And I would like to ask for advice again, if you don't mind ><
I need help on the contents page of this manga, Chocola no Mahou. It's split into two and when I tried to connect them, I realized that the size is a bit different, so should I put them together or leave it as it is? And lastly, I'm guessing that I need to make the font a bit bigger on the page with the chapter titles. I'll improve it on that later, so other than the size, can you please offer more advice and help? The writing seems plain and I'm not so good at spicing things up. Thanks agaiin

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About the Chocola no Mahou's page:
1)made two layers, one white e other with texture. They both are on normal mode.
texture:

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2)put the two layers in the same place. The white layer is under the texture layer.

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3) change the texture layer to divide mode

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4)use brush toll on the white layer with the setting bellow:
(flow 40%, size 112px and hardness 0%)

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5) marge the layers, put on the right place and than make final adjustments

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6) recommended font: Harrington

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[zidane]

No offense to the poster above me, but the way you showed there is not only unnecessarily complicated, it's also just wrong.

Why on earth would you try copying the shape of the Japanese text for your background if you're gonna put the English text like that there, horizontally? There's absolutely no point in that unless you're gonna typeset following exactly that shape, which would be very limiting, if not to say impossible.

The oriiginal simply did this. They typesetted the bit and added a glow effect around the text. Photoshop allows you to do the exact same, why go through that complicated and unnecessary way? Not to mention, you completely missed out the noise effect of the glow and its color is not the same.

And you get something like this:

I used the baseline shift in the character window to move each letter up or down, added a 2px stroke around the letters and also added the glow effect with the settings I showed above, but you can probably get closer results to the Japanese, I didn't have the raw to compare it to open.

 

[tenshime]

Wow, thank you so much /bow
sorry for the late response though, been busy lately
ah, is there any special settings for archiving the pages?
so... just compress and press ok and upload to god-knows-where?