watchlet attempts cleaning challenge #3 and editing practice #2

[watchlet]

this forum doesn't seem incredibly active... :/

I've been using Photoshop for years and found a couple of good tutorials online a while ago, combining with the way I usually worked I tried to edit some stuff. Took me longer than a seasoned editor, but hopefully the quality's decent. And I'm terrible with typesetting if you didn't notice.

But here they are.





criticism/appreciation/love/advice appreciated.
and where to go next would be cool too.

 

[La_Muerte]

wow very nice on the dragonball, and on the other one except for the frameborder being a little bit bad its all good

 

[NeoShweaty]

you need to work on replacing greys for the cleaning example. All of them need to be redone

 

[watchlet]

I personally prefer the look of the toning, I never quite understood why groups like Shannaro and Inane average them out. Do most people here get rid of the toning and make them solid greys? :/

After I posted the original post I realized I missed some stuff on the second (like dirt specks on the gray, a couple of spots where I didn't color enough, etc) but I never thought of redoing the grey like that.

 

[oceanizer]

For typeset, generally font size is a little too big except 4th panel. Too big that it's getting a little too close to the bubbles.
"All tied up!" bubble's font should be a little bigger though.

For "Okay, I made myself useful!" bubble, I'll probably make it 4 lines or so, so there won't be too much empty space on top and bottom.
Same goes for "Gentle, dude, / gentle! I'm / delicate!" bubble. It'd be better if you put "Gentle, / dude, gentle! / I'm delicate!" since it'll be more balanced.

I don't like left or right aligned typeset even though it's the edge bubbles, but I guess that's a personal preference?



For cleaning, you'll see many dusts when you maximize your scan to 300%. Look at this:
http://raws.kefi.org/random/kaintest.png

The one on above is your clean, the one below is mine, further cleaned from yours. You'll see you left out a lot of non-purewhite dusts there.

Also, you might consider redrawing some stuff, since Jump scans are very bad quality and leaving borderlines as is makes scan looks ugly.

The last point is probably to redraw bubbles when it's kind of missing. (circled in red)



For grays, since I've never seen Shannaro or Inane's stuff, I cannot really say it, but most of the time Jump scans has printing problem. Some part comes out really light, the other part comes out pretty black. Probably people would prefer to replace it with same tone if possible. ie. Look at Rush or Null's recent releases, and you'll see how great they take care of grays.

 

[watchlet]

Wow, thank you muchly for all of that. I've always seen and respected your work a lot
Admittedly I got really lazy with that scan. I had the brightness turned on really bright on my laptop, that really didn't help things--I only realized it afterwards. (I judged by eye--not a good idea in this case.) I erased part of a bubble by mistake I remember and just forgot about it, silly things like that. I just said to myself I'd get it done before a certain time and quality obviously suffered for that. I'm going to go back right now and fix it up just for practice :3

This is a Shannaro scan. I don't download much Jump manga anymore, just the manga7 releases of Bleach and I just started with D.Gray-man again, admittedly I don't quite know what stuff Rush or Null do, being relatively new this these forums (lurked for scripts, but not much else).

I'm used to typesetting for a magazine type layout, not within bubbles--working things around the text rather than working text into tiny spaces. I heard somewhere that 14pt was somewhere around a standard, guess not. And I was a little afraid to expand the text in that one bubble. I didn't try too many configurations with that. But it's easy enough to play around with.

And I did most of this at three in the morning on a bizarre whim. :/ I'd like to think that I did better than some other people though. If that's not true just tell me XD

 

[oceanizer]

For the text font size, I do use 14px as my default font size when the image resolution is 72 dpi, but it still needs to be adjusted depends on the text amount + bubble size. I usually shift from 12.5px to 16~18px. And typeset shouldn't defer between magazine/tanko scans. Your font size would be different depends on the scan resolution, but that's for you to figure out

As for dusts, I usually use my eyes to judge, too. I only used magic wand tool so it'll be easier for you to see what's missing ^^; My eyes are weird, too. It catches dusts, but it's not catching parts that should be blackened so well

Yeah, I definitely recommend you to check out Null/Rush version, since they replaced grays really well that you'd believe that was the original tones used.

 

[watchlet]

I think I'm the opposite of you. I catch the blacks really easily, but the dust, not so. 'course, it might be because on a Mac and things are displayed differently. When I transferred my Timcanpi scans of D.Gray-man I was hella dissapointed because they didn't use pure black to correct and it showed up really really easily on here--probably not so with windows. So I've made it a special point personally to keep my blacks nice and clean and pure.

I see what you're saying now. I tried practicing on another scan before (actually it was one of the Aku-Tenshi editor tests) and I was trying to make my own patterns of the tones used so I could replace it on other spots. With the cleaning kind of scan, it isn't quite so easy.

What manga does Null/Rush scanlate? I'd like to see.

I'm working on the Kain one now (never read the manga, but from the page, I do like the art :3 ) but I have an updated version of the Dragon Ball one. It really does look much better, I will give you that.
edit // ack, i had the old one for a second. D:
here's the right one

 

[oceanizer]

Oh, they scanlate One Piece.

The new DB page looks better Probably only for the last bubble, try to insert a new line like this:
If you think
getting your
head dunked
a little bit is
worth a pair
of panties,
you are
deranged!

See, when you look at 3rd and 4th line, bubble width is wider in 4th line but text is longer in 3rd line. So manually changing the line there is good over there. Then last two lines, it looks a little tight over there, too, so changing the line over there is probably good, too.

Other than that...
Glah! Glub! text is a little to left/top, so moving it right/bottom by 1px each might be good... Though I'm judging it from my eyes only, so it might not be correct.
The bubble with "Great!" looks too tight, too, but hrm... ... Maybe try changing the horizontally scaling and/or tracking. Both can be found at Characters palette.

 

[Fnuckale]

About the Kain page, it just seems quite over leveled.

 

[illiteracy]

As far as distinguishing between blacks and whites, a lot of the time, it's just a difference in monitor settings. I recommend you look at http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php and try to get your monitor settings to view the page properly.

Oh, and my one comment as far as your edits go, is on the first one, you cropped the right side alright, but you need to crop the bottom cleanly as well. The main issue on that one is the typesetting, and I'm not going to comment on the jump scan clean.

 

[Tr14d]

i think its pretty good, but maybe u gan make the words a bit less disconnected?

 

[watchlet]

As far as distinguishing between blacks and whites, a lot of the time, it's just a difference in monitor settings. I recommend you look at http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php and try to get your monitor settings to view the page properly.

I'm not going to comment on the jump scan clean.

Thanks for the site--I just need to figure out how to adjust my contrast now. I can see the blacks perfectly fine but I have to strain to see the whites.

Though for the edit I wouldn't mind some criticism because I'm reworking that one. I know I did a halfassed job with it, points to look out for would be nice. :/

For the overleveling bit I didn't actually use levels, I used curves, and admittedly I used rather extreme settings. To me it looked okay in most parts, 'course I was paying attention to some bits more than others. That one frame with the houses probably suffered a fair bit.

I did check out the Rush Edited Manga, it is pretty impressive.

 

[Fnuckale]

Oh and don't forget Kain's eyes on the second frame, it kinda bugs me.
Once you get the greys done (right) the page should look a whole lot better.