What happened here? Sharp RAW results in blurry Final

[Silver_Sea]

Hello.

One of my group members made a Edited Manga which is blurrier than the original RAWs. I guess I could use curves + unsharp mask + save for web png-8etc to fix the problem...but the real problem is in the process.

I wonder if anyone has any suggestions to prevent this problem?

Another thing I'm not sure about is the best way to resize a scan. I made a tanko-scan @ 600dpi, rotated, cropped and resized it to width 800pix...creating the following RAW. I tested it by Editing one chapter with those RAWs and resulted in a final with no loss of sharpness nor a gain in filesize, hence I thought my RAWs were OK

...but apparently not. What's a better way for me to resize the file? And when? Obviously I don't want to resize to 72 dpi for cleaning...and is it even necessary to reduce it to 72 dpi?

I'd be very grateful for any advice. Thank you.~ Please don't hold back on telling me what I am doing wrong. I'm self-taught so far...I'm also interested in making a tute so any feedback won't be lost.

Stats:
RAW: (saved in .png)
Pixel Dimensions:1.96M
Width: 800 Pixels
Height: 1283
Resolution: 600dpi

Final: (saved in .jpeg)
Pixel Dimensions: 3.54M
Width:883 pixels
Height: 1400 pixels
Resolution: 72 dpi


THE RAW

Spoiler

THE FINAL

Spoiler

THE CLOSE_UP

Spoiler

 

[GGpX]

Okay where do I start...

First, you saved it in jpg. That's a no-no. Don't save black and white pages in .jpg.

Second, you probably did Save As and just selected JPG with medium quality. Again, don't do that. Only save color pages in jpg. I usually select quality 8 for saving jpg's

Third, you need to save the pages with Save For Web with the following stuff.

Fourth, unrelated to your question, the typesetting sucks. Put a greater effort into centering the text in the bubbles and don't use italics so much.

[edit]

I just noticed another thing:

Fifth, you upscaled the raw page. An even bigger no-no. You do not do this under any circumstances. You could downscale the raw page, sure. But never upscale it.

 

[Silver_Sea]

Fifth, you upscaled the raw page. An even bigger no-no. You do not do this under any circumstances. You could downscale the raw page, sure. But never upscale it.

Yeah: This is the key thing...what happened here? This is the real problem. Why did the Manga Editor do this? What would be a better way? Why not leave it with the same stats as the RAW? ie 600dpi. What's a good/standard filesize to save it to?

Stats:
RAW: (saved in .png)
Pixel Dimensions:1.96M
Width: 800 Pixels
Height: 1283
Resolution: 600dpi

Final: (saved in .jpeg)
Pixel Dimensions: 3.54M
Width:883 pixels
Height: 1400 pixels
Resolution: 72 dpi

First, you saved it in jpg. That's a no-no. Don't save black and white pages in .jpg.

True, the final was saved in .jpeg, which makes it blurry. Thks.

Fourth, unrelated to your question, the typesetting sucks.

WHOA, you sure are frank ~ luckily I didn't typeset it, or it would've hurt, XD

 

[GGpX]

Yeah: This is the key thing...what happened here? This is the real problem. Why did the Manga Editor do this? What would be a better way? Why not leave it with the same stats as the RAW? ie 600dpi. What's a good/standard filesize to save it to?

Why the Manga Editor did it is beyond me. Why do people listen to rap and think they're gangstaz because they dress up like the rappers they listen to?

Depends on the raws you have, really.

Your 1,283 height raws would be best suited when resized to 1,200 height. Resizing to 1,100 is a waste if you ask me.

WHOA, you sure are frank ~ luckily I didn't typeset it, or it would've hurt, XD

Yeah, I am.

 

[Silver_Sea]

Your 1,283 height raws would be best suited when resized to 1,200 height. Resizing to 1,100 is a waste if you ask me.

Hmm...I take it that as long as the pixel height makes sense, ie. 756 X 1200, then its redundant to consider the dpi. As far as I can tell, it doesn't affect how it looks on the default windows image viewer. Er, know what I mean?

But on the subject of Edited Manga, my guess that the Manga Editor scaled it to 72 dpi for "web viewing"...in this case, would there be a same result for a file of 72 dpi and 600dpi if they were the same filesize? I.e. both pages at 1.5M. >.< ....thanks for helping, I'll go test this out later on too.

 

[GGpX]

Hmm...I take it that as long as the pixel height makes sense, ie. 756 X 1200, then its redundant to consider the dpi. As far as I can tell, it doesn't affect how it looks on the default windows image viewer. Er, know what I mean?

Essentially, yeah.

But on the subject of Edited Manga, my guess that the Manga Editor scaled it to 72 dpi for "web viewing"...in this case, would there be a same result for a file of 72 dpi and 600dpi if they were the same filesize? I.e. both pages at 1.5M. >.< ....thanks for helping, I'll go test this out later on too.

They'd be different. dpi stands for dot per inch. Which essentially means "more detail". Higher dpi, higher detail.

Normally, they shouldn't be the same size.

 

[Silver_Sea]

Thanks GGpX, I appreciate it.

Although these are beginner problems, I'd be making a tute about them and I'd be sure to credit you for your answers. ~

 

[Vato Loco!]

Ok, here's something to remember. The reason people reduce dpi is more than likely to reduce file size; web viewing might be one of the deciding factors. For example, take this page where I did 'save as' to png.

Spoiler

Now on that page the only thing I did was reduce size to 1200px>Level>flatten>save as. Leaving the dpi alone (dpi is 300 in this case). Regardless of how little I did to the page, it is still a whopping 1.1m in size. Add onto that a blacks, whites, grays, and borders layer and the page could easily top 1.5m. Now this might not seem like a problem by itself, but add onto that 16 more pages like it and you've easily got a weekly manga sized release topping 20-25mbs.

Now if you use the good way of saving chapters (the way GGpX linked or the way shinwei states in his cleaners compendium) then you won't need to really worry about reducing dpi because the save for web will reduce it to 96 (well it does with shinweis vers. anyways.) However, there are some groups that opt not to do this, and save at a specific dpi all together. For instance, take JapFlap. They save all their pages at 150 dpi (along with having all their pages at the same size of 754x1100 ).

Personally I use the way shinwei suggests when I do chapter saves.

Also, while it may be true that the higher the dpi the higher the quality There's a limit to what people will notice, even for the experienced cleaner. Usually for manga scans there's no real reason to go over 300 dpi, though it might be personal preference. And even then the only real reason for that type of quality at 3000+px would be for producing good pre-cleans. The only people I've heard doing 600 or so dpi are those doing magazine scans (like time mag. or thrasher mag.)

---

As for why there's a blur and theres 'black bleeding', you've come across two of the biggest flaws there is when saving as JPEG. It indeed does produce blurry images, and also produces jpeg artifacts, which would be the black spots you're seeing. Two more reasons to save as png.

Also, I see no reason not to re-size the dpi for cleaning. It'll make a smaller raw for your cleaners to dl, and if you save the good way your dpi will be changing to 96dpi regardless of the previous resize.

The truth about high dpi raws and what make them great is that they are still very detailed in high px such as 3000+. This makes them great for pre-cleaning because of the high detail. But the more you size down your page, the more the high dpi becomes less apparent. And at 1200px having a really high dpi is kind of pointless and really only making your groups raw sharing harder than it has to be.

Lastly, what GGpX said about upscaling is very true. If you insist on releasing at 1400 then your final psd before the final save should be bigger than that. Going from a smaller px to a higher px will always blur the page, which is probably another part of your original problem.

Anyways, hope this also helps.

 

[Silver_Sea]

Thanks for the info, Vato Loco!

We're just starting out our Gintama Edited Mangas so we're learning the rules by trial and error. Thanks for teaching me, I appreciate it. I'll try to share the info on the Tutes thread.

#01: PRE-EDITING

Now on that page the only thing I did was reduce size to 1200px>Level>flatten>save as. Leaving the dpi alone (dpi is 300 in this case).

followed by

Now if you use the good way of saving chapters (the way GGpX linked or the way shinwei states in his cleaners compendium) then you won't need to really worry about reducing dpi because the save for web will reduce it to 96 (well it does with shinweis vers. anyways.)

Got'cha: RAWS> resize by height to 1200px>level>flatten> save for web>pngcrush
>>>>send to cleaner.

Is that the work flow?

Hmm...or am I missing something..that's not right is it? I didn't save for web before I sent the RAW to the cleaner, because I thought that that step was done at the final step, right after typesetting. Or should it be done at the Pre-editing phase?

#02 RAWS RESIZE

Also, I see no reason not to re-size the dpi for cleaning. It'll make a smaller raw for your cleaners to dl, and if you save the good way your dpi will be changing to 96dpi regardless of the previous resize.

Right. Well, I'll resize from 600dpi to 300dpi for cleaning...thks!

But same question again. Should I use "save for web + png crush"? then or at the last step?

#03 PNG OPTIMIZERS
Uh.../ I can't use them. Not even about the command line entry part...I can't open and run the program on my computer, after dl and saving it. The dos screen blinks open and disappears right away. What is happening?? My anti-virus software?

Spoiler

Another time I did get one of the png optimisers to run, reducing my file size by 20%, but then I had no clue wth the saved/optimized version went...but you can ignore this question, I guess, its irrelevant if I get the png crusher to run first

Thanks... ^_^

 

[Vato Loco!]

1. Actually, I think you missed the point of the reason the page was there. It was only there to demonstrate what a simply altered, finished page, would be sized as with out the dpi reduced.

And yes, the work flow is incorrect. The save for web, and png crush for that matter, should only be used for the final release save.

Personally I think it's better to work with psds until the final save. This way all the pages are saved the same way, and if a mistake is made on the part of the cleaner it's easily fixable.

2. Actually, I was saying that even 300dpi was excessive for just regular cleaning. Usually we get the pages rotated, cropped and sized down to the release size before even handing them to the cleaners. The cleaners get the psds at 72 dpi at 1200px in height, and are not expected to crop or re-size.

3. Actually, I've never used png optimizers, or even png crush so I can't really help there.

 

[Silver_Sea]

1. Actually, I think you missed the point of the reason the page was there. It was only there to demonstrate what a simply altered, finished page, would be sized as with out the dpi reduced.

Em, yeah, I guess so, lol. I'm sorry. But it was a good example to show me how you resized the RAW. It helped. ^^

Personally I think it's better to work with psds until the final save. This way all the pages are saved the same way, and if a mistake is made on the part of the cleaner it's easily fixable.

Hmm, I cleaned a chp last week and even though I worked with separate layers at the start, I soon began flattening everything into the background for easy "copy via layer". I made a new layer if I had to test out a new redrawing/cloning, but right after I was ok with it, I immediately flattened it....Is that your experience as well?

2. Actually, I was saying that even 300dpi was excessive for just regular cleaning.

Oh, okay. I didn't get that, but now I do ~:P Thanks

Thanks for everything: The "vato mas suave de aquellos", XD;;;;;

 

[Vato Loco!]

Lol. Not what I do at all. I always keep my layers intact. I'd rather do my work on separate layers to be on the safe side. It's not like it's that big of a problem. And usually I can tell how many layers I'll need for a page by looking it over. If the number starts to get excessive I'll usually just start grouping layers together, such as all the gray layers, or all the stroke layers.

 

[Silver_Sea]

I see. I'm glad to hear another viewpoint, it helps me out as I practice...Thanks! =)