Cleaner Test

Cleaners, typesetters, editors and redrawers
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hristoaz
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:14 pm

Cleaner Test

Postby hristoaz » Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:34 pm

Name: Chegg
Availability: My schedule is almost always open, maybe except for sundays and thursdays. I'm in uni but it's coronatime so 's all good.
What Manga You're Interested In: Saw the ad in Funouhan but I'm up for anything.
Software: Photoshop
Experience: Haven't worked on manga cleaning before, just some on and off photo editing
Other Groups: N/A

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SB86ay ... sp=sharing

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Wraith
Posts: 3366
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Re: Cleaner Test

Postby Wraith » Sat Nov 14, 2020 9:44 pm

Hello, Chegg,

I do triage for cleaning applications and I'm afraid your is a fail. Basically, you don't have any command of the basics, including removing paper texture, adjusting tones and dusting.

Sarrymast's and Delux's guides in this list are good places to start learning how to clean manga: https://quicksandscans.wordpress.com/resources/

If you choose to reapply, we'll be glad to take a look in your resubmission. You may post it as a reply to this thread, no need to make a new one.

Cheers!
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hristoaz
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:14 pm

Re: Cleaner Test

Postby hristoaz » Sun Nov 15, 2020 12:12 am

will do!
just so I don't make a mistake though, in 04 should I redraw in the space left from removing the text on the character's face?
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Wraith
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Re: Cleaner Test

Postby Wraith » Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:08 am

No redraws are needed in the cleaning test.
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hristoaz
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Re: Cleaner Test

Postby hristoaz » Sun Nov 15, 2020 5:56 am

I've made another attempt. The guides really helped a lot.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jbBWYa ... sp=sharing
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Wraith
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Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Re: Cleaner Test

Postby Wraith » Sun Nov 15, 2020 5:21 pm

Alright, that was a marked improvement, you learn fast. There are problems and you're still in need of improvement to pass, but here's a more detailed feedback:

File 03: those are digital low-q raws, so I'm not sure why you upscaled them to 3000 px. Digitals we leave at native size, normally. However, you accomplished one thing that's essentially the spirit of cleaning low-q digis, which is to use light to moderate filtering to make the image more pleasant to the eyes. I'm not sure whether you used Topaz, Surface Blur, Sharpen or a combination of them, but you did it rather well. Perhaps you were a bit too aggressive, in that some screentones got damaged (for example, the cheek circles on the guy's face lost some of their edge gradient). All in all, it's not a pass because of the upscaling, but you have good instincts. Levelling was good as far as I can see, too.

File 04: those are public low-q raws, and you again upscaled them. As a rule of thumb, upscaling should be avoided (the exception being very low-q digitals with simple art, like a 1000 px height page). You also overfiltered it, you can see how the edges of the line art became a little jagged. Also, the "Denoise Clean", other than bubble clearing, was unnecessary, it removed a few details and made sharpness even more excessive. The "Detail Clean" layer is still a little too filtered, but detail and screentones are more or less preserved and the dusting looks also good. It's far too cropped in the edges, though: cropping should remove just the edges of the paper, and leave a white area similar to that of the physical manga.

File 05: these are high-res privately scanned volume raws, and you didn't resize them. You could have left them at final height of 2400 px. Cropping was also excessive at the right. The Clean Copy layer, again, is overfiltered and some screentone detail is lost, but the Clean layer is better. It still has too much black dust, though:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b2mnhrt2osskb ... t.png?dl=0 (253-1-255 on levels exposes black dust)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oofwqb4hvsb81 ... t.png?dl=0 (1-1-3 on levels exposes white dust; there's more on the soldiers' armour in the top panel)

Much of this dust is removed in the Clean Copy layer, but using aggressive filtering to remove dust is a big no-no, especially when it comes to physical raws, which should be cleaned conservatively to preserve details of the art.

On the plus side, though, you managed to distinguish that the old samurai in the shadow had a pattern of his coat mail on his torso, so you only dusted his shadow and his head: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1laq290p8b3ig ... k.png?dl=0 (Many applicants get this wrong and remove the coat mail shadow thinking it's dust.)

The issue of whether dust you only see on hyperlevels should be cleaned is debatable. It can be argued that even if you can't see it, someone with a better computer screen might. Better to get rid of it.

By the way, Curves are superior to Levels for adjusting black and white tones. Here's a quick guide to Curves: https://www.insidescanlation.com/etc/su ... clean.html (You'll need to try your hand a little, though.)

File 06: this one was from magazine high-resolution physical raws. You could also have downscaled it to 2400, and you cropped it too much, like File 04. The "Clean" layer is rather good, if a little overfiltered, but you still left too much dust. You can see leftover dust by adding hyperlevel layers:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ibzi6o8hceydf ... t.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0mgwtd5n3ni90 ... d.png?dl=0

Again, the Clean Copy layer was excessive.

File 07: these are also privately scanned high-res volume raws. And again, excessively cropped and not resized. Clean Copy isn't excessive, but it's unnecessary, and a little blurrier than Clean. Clean itself looks quite good, and properly dusted, too. Perhaps a bit overlevelled, but I'm not the person to issue final judgement on that. May I also note that if you resize right before dusting, you'll have less dust to deal with, and will be able to use less aggressive filters.

File 08: these are good volume digitals. The purpose of this page is to test cleaners' instincts. Basically, when to know you don't have to do anything, or as little as possible. That page is good enough as is. If anything, a teensy bit of Sharpen could improve it modestly, but you went pedal to the metal on filtering. The consequence is that you generated A LOT of moiré on the screentones:

Original screentone: https://www.dropbox.com/s/drbyzjv5f8uc3 ... e.png?dl=0
Strong moiré after you overfiltered it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0m9a37r51j9bs ... 9.png?dl=0

I'll be very frank - moiré is a contentious issue. Some scanlators are ready to tolerate A LITTLE moiré on backgrounds if it makes details such as facial features and the like more marked. Others hate moiré of any kind with a vengeance. I'm more on the former group, but you went too far on the moiré, I'm afraid.

And again, the page was overcropped.

The Ouro double: this one still needs work on. Namely:

- Excessive filtering combined with lack of resizing highlighted printing imperfection blotches that are inconspicuous if you clean less aggressively: https://www.dropbox.com/s/on4jp2y68igw8 ... s.png?dl=0 (This is just one example, there are many in the whole page.)

- You failed to notice that non-uniform printing made one half of the page lighter than the other. The cop's hat in the middle is the area where you can see that more easily: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4mds0nt5o1m9i ... s.png?dl=0

The way to do this is to use Curves or Levels layers as Clipping masks for the halves and adjust their tones separately until they match.

- Mismatched alignment: this is the kind of thing that's unacceptable because it makes redrawing impossible or extremely difficult. See what you did:

i. At the top, the left and right halves don't align: https://www.dropbox.com/s/21kvzq8qaf8tw ... p.png?dl=0
ii. At the bottom, they do: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9c2fb2ufmn64x ... m.png?dl=0

No redrawer can work with this.

Why did this happen? There are many possible reasons, not mutually exclusive. You may have cropped them separately. Or you may have just not rotated the right half properly because there are no vertical panel edges to guide you. Or you may have chosen a wrong gap width. The thing is: to combine halves, you have to put them in the same canvas before anything else, rotate and adjust gap width so that all lines that begin in one half continue naturally in the other, make sure both pages are straight and only them crop and resize.

Finally, you also failed to change RGB pages to greyscale. Some raws are generated in RGB, and the cleaner should change them to greyscale at the beginning of cleaning.

Anyway, the only reason I can give you detailed feedback is that you made so much progress that now we can point to specific problems. And mind it, this is just triage: I take a look at applications and decide which ones deserve to be assessed by the Head Cleaner. Yours didn't make it, but consider that yesterday I only gave you a blurb and told you to look guides up. Now you're actually cleaning. In 24 hours. That's a world of progress.

If you're interested in being trained from this point on, feel free to contact us in Discord. Or just work on the pointers I've given you, and then resubmit your application. If you've had enough, though, I thank you for your efforts.

Cheers!
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hristoaz
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:14 pm

Re: Cleaner Test

Postby hristoaz » Sun Nov 15, 2020 7:49 pm

I'll absolutely keep going, really appreciate the individual notes for each page(also the note about resizing right before dusting is going to come in really handy). I felt that 08 looked fine but wasn't sure if I was missing something so I tried to clean it anyways, guess that was a bad call.
Also tbh I was a bit confused about resizing since I wasn't sure what height you guys use for different scans, thanks for the clarifications.
Definitely going to check out Curves and see if I can't apply them.

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