Cleaner test

Cleaners, typesetters, editors and redrawers
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Jim_97
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Location: Somewhere, probably procrastinating, hard.

Cleaner test

Postby Jim_97 » Fri Sep 10, 2021 4:03 pm

https://litter.catbox.moe/0c7gzy.7z
Note: I'm using a temporary files sharing site which only retain said files after a maximum of 3 days. if anyone need access to the files after the above time period by all means let me know. sorry for the inconveniences.

Name: Jm97
Availability: Every other day until college starts again, afterwhich I have no clue how the workload will be but I can guarantee at least once a week.
What Manga You're Interested In: 7 days... brought me here. Am willing to work on anything (as long as it isn't hair-pulling-ly hard.)
Software: Krita
Experience: Nope
Other Groups: None

Cleaning is really no walk-in-the-park, man!
Two question though, what filter (term used by my program, I'm unsure what photoshop calls it but the options contain "BLspine", "Bell", "Bilinear", "Bicubic", "Nearest neighbor", etc.) should I use when scaling and manipulating a page? Krita defaulted to "Bicubic" but I wonder if there's a better option. And should I join the 2 hales of the double page before or after I straitened them and scale them to the appropriate size? I think I did something and now not only the one of the Ouro pages looks softer than the other (which cycles back to the first question); they no longer match in the middle that I haphazardly tried to coverup by over laping them untill they do.

PM is my primary method of contact. Everything else is dead.
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Wraith
Posts: 3366
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Re: Cleaner test

Postby Wraith » Sat Sep 11, 2021 3:33 am

Alright, we have your assessment by our Head Cleaner.

He believes you have potential. You have an eye to detail, like warping the areas near the margins so you don't need to crop art away.

However, you still need to work on your skills before you can earn a pass. Things he's remarked on:

i. You left the page rips in place instead of removing them.
ii. You overlevelled the pages to compensate for not having dusted them manually. I know dusting is a pain, there are even people trying to train AI to do it, everyone hates it, but it's a must to work with scanned pages. The way to do it is to add a hyperlevels layer to highlight the dust and remove it by hand. If you try to get it by levelling alone, you'll damage the art.
iii. And yes, you need to stitch the half-pages of the double Ouro spread. You merge first (leaving a gap appropriate for the redrawer), then you proceed to resizing, cropping and cleaning them together so that the halves match. Also, bicubic is okay, whatever "filter" your software defaults to.

Unfortunately, none of us uses the software you use and as such we can't teach you the ropes. You'll have to figure out what tools to use to achieve the same results, but here's a list of useful guides for cleaning physicals in Photoshop: https://quicksandscans.wordpress.com/re ... tingguides . So long as your software can produce multilayered files we can open in PS, we don't mind what you clean with.

Should you choose to fix the issues and reapply, we'll be glad to assess it again. Good luck!
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Jim_97
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2021 7:16 am
Location: Somewhere, probably procrastinating, hard.

Re: Cleaner test

Postby Jim_97 » Wed Sep 15, 2021 6:11 pm

Oh jeez, this one took a bit longer than I thought, but here is my second attempt:
https://img.neko.airforce/files/gxwteh.7z

I tried to keep the leveling to a reasonable amount and used the hyper leveling to find dust (my initial reaction after adding that layer was somewhat akin to a germophobe finding out that everything is covered with bacteria lol). And sorry for using a different file hosting service every time, I was having some issues with catbox.
PM is my primary method of contact. Everything else is dead.
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Wraith
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Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Re: Cleaner test

Postby Wraith » Sun Sep 19, 2021 11:10 pm

Our Head Cleaner verdict:

In terms of dusting, I've seen a significant improvement. They're now not overleveling to compensate, while doing a good enough dusting job. There are a few obvious specs left here and there, but nothing to fail the test for (I was like that too on my test)

06 needs to be bubbled, seems they forgot to do this. Not sure how you didn't notice this if you went through all the pages

The Ouro double is the biggest thing holding them back from joining our staff. I have a feeling it's just a limitation of their software not being able to edit 2 pages at once. Tell them they need to at least get the pages looking similar, and they've passed the test (and get 06 bubbled)


I had noticed the problem with the double. See if your software can add adjustment layers specific for each half of the double, so that you can adjust one for the tones to match those of the other.
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Jim_97
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Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2021 7:16 am
Location: Somewhere, probably procrastinating, hard.

Re: Cleaner test

Postby Jim_97 » Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:03 am

For the double page, it's not really due to the software but rather to my own limitations. page 84 looked softer (have less contrast) than 85 (due to all the warping I did while lining the pages up) which threw me off a bit. In the end I just gave up and copied the leveling values from one adjustment layer to another.
After hearing the feed back, I tried to up the brightness of page 84 a bit so that the pages' tones match a little more when zoomed out, but when individual pixels can be seen, it looks kinda off. What would you recommend doing in a case like this?

Anyway, here is the fixed 06 and double page
https://img.neko.airforce/files/kqcfcr.7z
PM is my primary method of contact. Everything else is dead.
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Wraith
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Re: Cleaner test

Postby Wraith » Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:10 pm

On page 6, you also need to remove the ads at the right margin.

The double has improved a lot, but it still needs work. Basically, you got most areas to match, except for the cop's shirt, which is now darker on the left than on the right. Brightness/contrast may not be the best way to adjust that. Curves might give you a better result. You'll have to fiddle around with that a little, but we assure you it's possible. (After all, this page was cleaned and released ages ago.) Levels may also work. Or dodging/burning/curving just the mismatched area using a layer mask, if Photoshop terminology makes sense in Krita. Get that done properly, and you pass.

In case you're wondering, the reason we're so strict about this double is that this was a printing mistake by the publisher, and these happen from time to time. It's rare, but any cleaner of physicals must know how to deal with them. It's nitpicking, but based on situations you'll find in the front lines when you become a cleaner.

This old tutorial gives basic training on curves: https://www.insidescanlation.com/etc/su ... clean.html (If you level well, that's all we need, but veteran cleaners are unanimous that curves are superior to levelling, though harder to use. You don't need to redo any pages you did with levelling, this is just a suggestion to solve the problem of the Ouro double, leave the other pages as they are since they're already good.)
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Jim_97
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2021 7:16 am
Location: Somewhere, probably procrastinating, hard.

Re: Cleaner test

Postby Jim_97 » Wed Sep 22, 2021 1:49 am

Okay, hows this: https://litter.catbox.moe/q4o40q.7z
I tried to get over the whole soft/sharp thing by adding a blur layer over the whole image, might have axed page 84's contrast even further.

+ png for convenient in-browser viewing: https://litter.catbox.moe/580g5u.png
PM is my primary method of contact. Everything else is dead.
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Wraith
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Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Re: Cleaner test

Postby Wraith » Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:10 am

So… you might be going at this the wrong way. You did improve the matching of the halves, but at the cost of making the right side blurry.

Like I mentioned before, the way to do it doesn't require altering the sharpness/blurriness of the halves. I understand you have to do some of it because you use Warp to straighten the pages at the edges, but that can be done in a localised manner and it shouldn't have a bearing on how to go about the matching of the halves.

This is a scaled-down version of the page after cleaning and redrawing, just to show that it is possible to do it seamlessly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mf9kvvjk4zgb1 ... e.png?dl=0

It can be done with just curving/levelling, or dodging/burning, of specific regions that remain mismatched after you fix the rest. To do these adjustments to just one area, at least in PS we use masks. There might be an equivalent feature in Krita.

Let me just add that you're making a very positive impression. Patience and tenacity are the key skills of a cleaner, and you have enough of both to go by. You just need to figure this one page out and you're in.
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Jim_97
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2021 7:16 am
Location: Somewhere, probably procrastinating, hard.

Re: Cleaner test

Postby Jim_97 » Wed Sep 22, 2021 12:51 pm

In the last post I meant that I use a blur layer so that I could focus more on the tone of the pages, similar to how the hyper leveling layer is used to check for dust. And the thing about contrast is due to me inexperience-ly trying to get everything to match up with the curve.

This time I think I finally got it. I individually adjusted the shirt and finally ended the annoying Soft Page saga using the Unsharpen filter (note to whoever else is also using Krita).
PSD: https://litter.catbox.moe/zbngbo.7z
PNG: https://litter.catbox.moe/ly2rq5.png
PM is my primary method of contact. Everything else is dead.
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Wraith
Posts: 3366
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Re: Cleaner test

Postby Wraith » Wed Sep 22, 2021 6:03 pm

Now it's good. You pass. Welcome to Death Toll! I've sent you a welcome message which is in your inbox here.

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