Cleaning Orcist's Quick and Dirty Precleaning Tutorial

[Orcist]

This is a tutorial on how to get decent precleans for Jump Magazine Raws. I've only tested it on Sket Dance but eh...details, details. The raws I'm using are pretty big at 2148x3844 and you might get different results if you're using a differently sized raw.
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Now, on the the cleaning. I'll be using a Sket page that you can find here. http://i42.tinypic.com/ie003r.jpg

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Preleveling

• Change the image mode to RGB if it isn't already
• Duplicate the current layer so that you can use the original image for reference.
• Resize the image to 8000 height
• Use Smart Sharpen at 93% with a 2.0 radius
• Resize to 3000 px Height
• Use Topaz Denoise with the following settings

Spoiler

Noise Reduction: .54
Shadow: -.06
Recover Detail, Reduce Blur, and Add Grain at 0.0

• Use Surface Blur with 26 radius and the threshold at 10

Leveling

• Level the blacks to 40, the whites to 234, and the grays to .65
• Level the blacks to 20, the whites to 215, and the grays to .66
• Use Topaz Denoise with .74 Strength and .36 Shadow and Desaturate the page after you're done.
• Level the Blacks at 35, the whites at 228, and the grays at .63
• Level the Blacks at 10, the whites at 241, and the grays at 1.48

Preleveling

• Resize the image to 1200 height and run Topaz Clean with the Degrunge preset to smooth out the grays.
• Level with the grays at 1.32
• Manually fix whatever's left

Before/After Picture
http://i44.tinypic.com/jb1wyg.png
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I hope this tutorial was helpful, even if it was a bit needlessly complicated. Any criticism or review is is greatly appreciated because I'm always looking for ways to improve this.

 

[[Ju-Ni]Vicissitude]

Ugh... Denoisers and blurring... You embody what's wrong with manga cleaning these days.