Cleaning SFX Over Gradient - Video

This is one of hard things to do for new cleaner, which is cleaning a SFX over gradient background. In this case it's a simple gradient gray-to-white gradient. It's harder when the gradient is patterned or have random shapes and stuff, which requires more of your creativity to redraw/cloning those part, to look good. Over hard SFX you can consult with your typesetter, to ask how they're going to typeset those SFX. If they're using a big enough font + white stroking. Cleaning the SFX until they look flawless, is unnecessary.

-Update : Youtube removed my audio. Well changed to youtube stock music then.

I've made this tutorial in Video, cause I have not yet find how to make this in in screenshot. There are other techniques you can use to clean over gradients. This one will work the best if you have a lot of untouched gradient portion. Meaning 1) there wasn't any SFX over that part 2) That part must at least 1/4 the size of the SFX overlayed are (smaller part could also do, but it going to take a lot of time.)

If I find a way how to, I'll re-make this as Picture by Picture Tutorial also.

Cleaning Black-white-stroked SFX

To Clean that type of Special Effects that have a white stroke already, from the RAW. This is the simplest safest way to clean them,

First Select the Black SFX with Wand Tool (Press "w" on your keyboard).

Then go to Select > Modify > Expand

Input the Expand Pixel size, Usually I only need to use 1px.

As you can see the Black Japanese Text have been selected, while still inside the white stroke.
With your White Brush, brush over the selected area. Brushin them is easy now as you can only brush inside the selected area.

After you have brush them, all you need to do now is Clone/Re-Texture/Redraw, what ever it overlayed.

Saving Your Work

This tutorial Is intended for QC or Typesetter, I don't really sure which one, as different groups has different methods in scanlating. If Cleaner are uploading the finished cleans as JPG or PNG please avoid this guide, as this guide is for Final product which mean less the size with great quality. Which if you pass them to other job, when the re save them the quality will degrade.

After everything is done, and you're relieved that there's no more hard work to do, this is one last job to do. Exporting the Scanlated Pages to common Image Format i.e (JPEG and PNGs). Most HQ scans will release with PNG format, as it's a Lossless format (*well not really a lossless format, buat are using lossless compression, which mean high quality with small size, compared if you use uncompress TIFF), which means PNG are more likely to be larger than JPEG in file size for the same image. To save in the Highest Quality you can use PNG-24 which is lossless. This Guide will teach saving at PNG-8 Small Size with great Quality. If you use JPEG for HQ scans use 90-100, for medium Quality use 70-80, never use below than 60, unless if you have checked and there are no artifacts caused by JPEG compression.

To reduce the file size, when saving as PNG-8, and use this setting.

First go to as usual...
File > Save for Web and Devices...  | Alt + Ctrl + Shift + S ( I make a macro for this)
Compare you're preset with Original by selecting 2-Up at the left upper corner.

First Select PNG-8 128 Dithered Preset, and this is what you should change

Selective > Adaptive
Uncheck Transparency
Set Dither to 100%

Now this will leave you with color. For Colors this one will need to be adjusted manually and using your decision, you need a good eyes at this. Colors usually are adjusted according to cleaning style, if your style of cleans are black and white contrast, and remove most of the gray, try at 17 First. Then you can select higher number. If you're cleaning style will leaving gray part (part of the shirt gradient or color, and not the paper gray), Normally it'll would require at least 32 colors, sometimes 17 will be good enough.


Remember this when lowering the Colors:

• ALWAYS check the Gradient part (gray to white, black to white gradient), if your colors are to low some dot like artifact will show on a gradient part.
• Also If you color is to low, look at part of pages that have detailed pattern such as this tiny checker box, they will have artifacts if color is too low. The artifacts is that dot I'm talking about, but way smoother and less grainy.
• Check anything with high complexity and anything with colored gray

These are the comparison of the same settings with 3 different colors setting

You can see the top upper left corner of the 8 Colors page, the gradient is not smooth,
and there are some dot-like. Dither ??

At 17 Colors, the dots disappeared and the gradient is smoother but you can
see there are some artifacts, or those dots if you see them closely.

Now this really almost have no different with the Original, which would do fine if you save them
this way. 

The 32 Colors Settings will save at around 180-300KB range usually. If you save them on PNG-24 you'll have at least 400KB, and usually around 500KB for each page.

If your scans need to release at really Uncompressed/Lossless quality then always use PNG-24 Settings.

The settings which you used the most should be saved as a Preset so you won't have to set them everytime you want to save. This is not a problem if you only use your Photoshop for Saving the same image everytime, Save for Web and Devices will remember last setting of saved images. If you use Photoshop also for other things, e.g you want to save and image from DSLR to web, and you need to watermarked them, after finished the I then change the image size and save via Save for Web and Devices which use JPEG 60-70% Quality (to prevent random people having a full quality of shots I've taken, and smaller filesize). This of course are different with my Manga saving which use PNG-8

To save a setting make a preset by:

Click the button which look like Paragraph formatting with a down-arrow at the left of it. This button is located on the right of Preset Dropdown, and above Colors.
Then Click Save Settings.

Name whatever you like, and everytime you want to save manga scans, select the preset you've made and set the colors for it.

Speck Check

This is the step to check if there are any unwanted spots at your pages. This is probably caused by Bad RAW (too much compression, artifacts), or there are dust on the scanning process.

This is one of the way to check for specks in your cleans.

Click the Adjustment Button in the bottom of the Layer Panel 

It looks like this:

Then Click Levels....  

Rename this new Levels Layer to Something else.

What you need to do now is slide the Grey (the middle slider (grey Slider) or the Black Slider/LeftSlider all the way to the right).

Make Sure this SpeckCheck Layer is the most top layer in the document.

If you find a dust spot, hide this layer and check if it's visible and an unwated spots. You can then clean in with brush or marquee.

When you're done, remove / hide this speck check layer and save your document.

You can make this an actions, because there;s no adjusting here, just slide the slider all the way to the right..

Just make sure when you run the actions, your active layer is the top layer.

Manga Cleaning Tutorial (Easy)

First,
Open the RAW on to your Photoshop.
This is an example of a Really good RAW Scans, you can even just remove the text and typeset it, and it'll still somehow still a proper enough page for release.

Duplicate your current Background Layer. To Show Layer Pane, Window > Layer
Then Right Click at the active layer > Duplicate Layer

You could also Duplicate Active Layer by pressing Ctrl + J.

Levels

There should be a button like this in the bottom of your Layer Pane

Click them and choose Levels...

Leveling are quite easy, just slide the black slider (the left on) to where the starting peak is.

 You just need to slide the slider to left side of the base of the peak, Like in the image below

You don't need it to be really black right now, as long the area which supposed to be white is white. 

Don't play with the middle slider, unless you know what you're doing, it'll cause jagged lines, if you move it too much (it'll move automatically as you slide the 2 other slider, but if you slide it by yourself, you might get jagged lines)

Brightness

Click Adjusment button on the layer pane again and select Brightness and Contrast and set it to make it a little bit blacker by using Brightness Slider, you don't need the Contrast, cause you're playing with black and white images, it doesn't do anything much.

Resizing

Now Let resize your page, Open it via Image > Image Size, or by pressing (Alt + Ctrl + I). Usually different scans group have different size standard, Most scans uses with 800px Width, and let Constrain Proportion decide the height, as long it isn't too far from 1200px. Some also use Height:1200px as standard, and left the width.

Makesure Constrain Proportions is ticked.

For Web Release (not for printing) 72 PPI is already good.

Mode

Now Select back the layer you Duplicate at first step, The RAW scan. Change it Mode to RGB. If you're not using Topaz (denoise and clean), change it to Grayscale and proceed to Removing text, you can skip this step

After you select RGB Color this option will appear, pick Don't Flatten. Make sure you're selecting the RAW Duplicate Layer.

Blur

After reading somewhere in a guide on how to clean Manga, and after testing it myself, Topaz Denoise will work better when used on blurred image, somehow it's true, it'll maintain the detail better, all you need to do is Re-Sharp it later.

Access Blur via Filter>Blur<Blur

Denoise-ing

This is a trial and Error step, I can't teach you much, you'll need to player by yourself on this, For RAW that are already have good quality as well not too much Noise, the First Preset "RAW_Normal" Should Be enough. You can see that blurred grey shadow in the background, it only takes RAW_Normal preset to make them, this is a very good RAW Scans.

I'll make this tutorial later for Denoising, I'm using the old version of Topaz Denoise, it should around version 5 right now.

Topaz Clean (Optional)


This is an unnecessary step if you have a good RAW, Unless you want to make them to have really smooth texture, you can set it with Topaz Clean, or even give more texture, you can use deGrunge.

If you had a not good RAW, and after Denoising, it still have lots of grain, use this.

Sharpening

Remember when we blurred the image earlier, although you can really sees it right now, after you re sharpen the image, it'll look better, more crisp.


Open Smart sharpen via Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen

Use this setting below

Amount : set this according to the result of previous process (blurring, denoising and cleaning) tick the Preview check box.
Radius: 1.5px, you can higher this also, just trial and error, which look better.
Remove Gaussian Blur.
More Accurate : you can tick this if you want even more sharp picture.

Removing Texts

Create a blank layer and rename it to Text, or something to tell you it's the layer where it block the text.

Now using Marquee tool, select the texts, which are box shaped usually, cause Japanese manga written up to down.

After the first selection, hold Shift and select the text on the other Balloon text.

You can zoom the image you select small texts like those dots.

Fill

Now fill the Areas you have selected, and make sure you are on a Blank Layer. Go to Edit > Fill, you can also press Shift+F5. Select Foreground colour/Background Color, make sure you are on default black and white color picker and make sure you choose the one with white (e.g you have with on foreground color, so  choose it). Before you go to Fill you can press D to change color picker to default (B&W)

Why on a blank layer ? so you can undo things if you make a mistake, this is the safest way. You left your Cleaned Picture untouched as possible.

Removing SFX

Create another blank layer and rename it to SFX or something, use brush and set the foreground color to white, and then you remove the SFX.

If it's over a picture/ grey background read the next part. 

What about the text/sfx that are over a picture/background ?


There's no easy way to explain this, you can redraw them after you erase them, I mostly use the Stamp tool (forgot what it called, it look like a stamp) To do this, it's impossible on a new blank layer. So what I usually do is duplicate the Layer 1 again, and select the area that I will work to redraw, then Inverse Selection and then delete it, so it became transparent, and only the redraw part exist. you might want to redraw first before deleting the other area.

1. If it's a white background but over a line > Use brush (white color) to remove the SFX/TEXT, then redraw it using Stamp tool (S)
2. If it's over a grey/gradient background, use the Stamp Tool directly, but remember to parallel the direction of the gradient, or else it might be noticeable. Heal tool works better on redrawing on a gradient area, but it's quite different to use them

Actions


If you clean regularly, you might want to record what you do, so you only need to play the record, so it'll automatically do things for you. Note that there are some parts that better to be manually handled such as Levels. 

Burning

Burning is the process to make black more black. This part isn't really necessary, if you wish to make something looks darker use this tool. e.g lines that look light, and it should be darker, use this.

Use this settings to darken details and lines or such.

Saving
If your scans group ask for PSD files to give to the next job (Typesetter), you just need to Ctrl+S or

File>SaveAs 



Find out what the next people who uses the PSD (i.e Typesetter) have what version of Photoshop, sometimes the latest version PSD won't work in older version. So you can maximize the files.

If you need to export them to Picture format such As PNG or JPEGs

Use File>Save for Web and Devices...

For B&W pages, you can set the settings to PNG-8 and set it like the picture below. Then click the button on the right of the Preset [Unnamed] and choose Save Preset, save it to Manga.

Colors should be change according to the end result of your cleaning, sometimes 17 is enough already (really high contrast cleaning, mostly only black or whites) if you have lot of grays, use 64 or more. Each step you pick, if the file size stop increasing much, it mean that it's the optimum colors option. 

for example, from 17 colors to 32 you have filesize from 23KB to 100KB (lot's of increase), from 32 to 64 you have 100KB to 234KB, still big, but from 64 to 128 it's only increase frmo 234Kb to 240KB. It mean 64 colors is the choice, as adding more colors, but not all are used in the picture, that's why files size increase by a bit.

But this is the job that's need a human eye, you must see the differents in adding and Subtracting color will effect on the picture. you should see the grey gradient areas, this is the most critical part when you lower the color.

For color pages, use JPEG or PNG-24 Settings. if you want to use PNG-8 you can try, but set Dither to 0%


Learn Quick Keys also to save time in Cleaning. The Most used tools Quick Keys List here

End of This Tutorial