Cleaner Test

Cleaners, typesetters, editors and redrawers
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Leviathan
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Cleaner Test

Postby Leviathan » Tue Jan 23, 2018 9:11 pm

Hello, I'm Leviathan.

I did cleaning in the past for a group but it was self directed learning and had to do cleaning and redraws. I didn't submit a redraw test as I still have a long way to go before I'm confident enough to apply for redrawing, I did it out of necessity at the time.

I'm looking to improve my skills and would be open to learning / assisting with whatever is necessary.

I found your group by reading Ichigeki and figured I would apply.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wfn70p0c0xvl0 ... t.rar?dl=0

Come Hell or High Water, will come Hell and High Water
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Wraith
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Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:58 pm

Re: Cleaner Test

Postby Wraith » Tue Jan 23, 2018 11:11 pm

Hi, Leviathan, thanks for applying!

Okay, your test has been assessed by our Head Cleaner and this is what she has to say, with some additions by myself. (Read it to the end, it's worth the trouble.)

- Pages 1 and 2 should have been pre-merged into a double, leaving a small gap in the middle so the redrawer could work on it. Pre-merging would also enable you to apply any corrections (like levelling, for example, if you judged it necessary) to both halves equally. You also forgot to change both pages to greyscale. Dusting was mostly okay on page 2, though there was some dust left on 1.

- Page 3 still has JPEG artifacts. Some people use Surface Blur, some people do Dusting, others use Sharpening, depending on the appearance of the page, to remove those artifacts without damaging the art much. It's a must for low-quality raws.

- Page 4 could have been resized a little bigger, like 1400 px, though 1200 is okay. You forgot to change it greyscale. Extra points for whitening the characters in areas that need redrawing. It shows you have previous experience. You also missed a little cropping at the bottom, we can see a dark line at the bottom edge.

- Page 5 should have been changed to greyscale, but it was mostly well done. Perhaps a tad overlevelled, but nothing to write home about.

- Page 6 was hard to believe. You forgot greyscale again, but the main problem is that you sized it UP to 4800 px height. That's a big no-no, it causes loss of sharpness and detail in the art (and it's too big to read in a normal computer screen). You should have decided to which height to size it down based on the quality of the raws. You left a little dust left, but that's a minor problem.

- Page 7 was the opposite of page 6 - you sized glorious high-resolution raws down to a miserly 1200 px height. You can shoot much higher than that. Levelling and Dusting were mostly fine, but you forgot to crop at the bottom, the whole white edge should have been cropped off. You could also have made the right white stripe the same width of the left one, but that's a minor problem. You also forgot to change it to greyscale.

All in all, you straightened the pages well.

You also merged the adjustment layers into a single clean layer. That's not a wise decision. If you had left the levels layer separate, for example, a quality checker could correct a mistake in levelling just by changing the values of the layer. By merging them, any correction must be made from scratch. You can leave all adjustment layers unmerged.

As you might have guessed, you don't pass. However, we wouldn't have given you this thorough assessment if we hadn't noticed you have good instincts for levelling and dusting. Those are very important traits and even though you made many mistakes, they are easy to correct, whereas learning levelling and dusting well is much harder. (For example, pages 1 and 2 can either be left unlevelled and completely dusted, or levelled just a little to get rid of part of the dust, and then dusted.)

If you choose to resubmit, we'll be happy to give you another assessment.

Thanks again, and good luck!
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Wraith
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Re: Cleaner Test

Postby Wraith » Wed Jan 24, 2018 11:09 am

I'm sorry, I wrote "you pass", but you may have guessed I forgot the "don't" TT TT
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Leviathan
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Re: Cleaner Test

Postby Leviathan » Wed Jan 31, 2018 11:30 pm

Hey,

Thank you very much for taking the time to point out what I missed on my pages. I really appreciate it.
On page 3 I was hoping you could make an example on the page so I could better understand what exactly you wanted changed. I understand what jpeg artifacts are and how they are generally removed but in the context of this page I didnt really follow.

This is my second attempt upload

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bcd2gzbvxodhl ... 2.rar?dl=0

Thank you again for your time
Come Hell or High Water, will come Hell and High Water
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Wraith
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Re: Cleaner Test

Postby Wraith » Thu Feb 01, 2018 12:33 am

Hi, Leviathan!

I got your message and have already sent it for our Head Cleaner.

I was impressed by how much you have improved since the last application. We'd say that you're not far from passing, so here's your assessment.

In general terms, you need to improve your Dusting, not of white specks in dark areas (that one is good, you use Burn well), but of black specks in white areas (which would need Dodge). You can use the same levels layer you used to highlight the whites in order to highlight the blacks. Just change it to 253-1-255 and take care of the black specks that appear. Page 7 is the worst one in that regard, there are dark specks in people's faces and between panels 1 and 2 at the top. Make sure you look for Dust in other pages, too.

Another problem is that you are cleaning bubbles manually. You should learn to use a bubble cleaning action, like this one: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kch9rcn9in89z ... e.atn?dl=0 (instructions at https://www.dropbox.com/s/pwdzunptef97y ... e.png?dl=0 ; fiddle a little with Tolerance to see what happens and you can use it on the white areas around panels, too, but don't use it in white areas that have art. Use it before filtering.)

Okay, now to the pages themselves, from the last:

- The only problem in page 7 is the Dust I mentioned above. (Examples of black dust: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... nknown.png and https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... nknown.png )

- Page 6 also has some dust left (a nasty patch on the woman's cheek), but you also used Denoise. That's technically not a problem (especially because these are high-resolution, but magazine raws), but be careful with what happens to art in detailed areas: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... nknown.png (Can you see they greyish areas that should be white?) You may want to Denoise less and dust manually more, especially with high-res raws. Or use PS filters that are less aggressive, like Surface Blur.

- Page 5 is overlevelled and well dusted, but at great cost. You filtered it with Denoise to get rid of the dust, but the result is that some detail was lost and the levels contributed to the loss, too. Also, the white areas will still look patchy with grey if you set the levels to 253-1-255 as I said above. That's not Dust, it's the paper texture that comes with scanning high-resolution raws. Instead of Topaz Denoise, try fiddling a little with Surface Blur to get rid of that texture. You could have done that on the Light Level layer you made, then used the bubble cleaning action and dusted the rest manually, it would have been fine.

- Page 4 could have been resized smaller, it didn't have resolution enough for 2000 px, so it's a teensy bit blurry. However, you managed to make it look good even at that size, which is not something we see every day. It's perfectly Dusted and Levelled, too. It's a total pass.

- Page 3… some Sharpen could have improved the final appearance. Blurriness is also a JPEG artifact. Tinker with it. But if you correct everything else, we won't fail you because of that.

- Page 1-2 is flawless.

In summary, you're doing something that many beginner cleaners do: overfiltering to avoid dusting. Filtering is essential part of cleaning, but the better the raws, the less you have to rely on Topaz and the more you should rely on less aggressive filters and manual dusting. We know dusting manually is tedious. Dusting is a dying art in this age of webraws, and it's getting harder and harder to find good cleaners who can do it well. But for groups that do obscure series like ours, manually scanned raws are essential, because webraws for our series are either low-quality or non-existent. So we go the extra mile to purchase high-quality raws and scan them privately, because we want our releases to look good.

You already know your cropping, resizing, straightening and detexting. Your level instincts are also good: you only got one page overlevelled in the whole test, and that's the hardest one. If you correct your Dusting and learn to use the bubble cleaning action I've given you, your chances of passing increase considerably.

Also, here's what I mean by leaving the adjustment layers in place: https://www.dropbox.com/s/220nvvfhda310so/13.psd?dl=0 (You don't need to do the same layers, I just mean it's not what you did in your test. Sometimes, just leaving the levels layer in place is all that's needed.)

In case you want to reapply, we'll be delighted to have another look at it. Good luck!
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Leviathan
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Location: Hell

Re: Cleaner Test

Postby Leviathan » Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:35 pm

Hey!

Thank you again for going through the pages for me with exactly what I could do to improve. After playing with surface blur I am really enjoying using it and am getting away from Denoise. That bubble cleaning action was really cool and I never thought of it though I need to play with it so it doesnt scorch the inner side of the bubble though I see how handy it could be. I went through each page that had things you mentioned for improvement. I did end up making changes to page 3, page 7 was "white" dusted, page 5 was redone from scratch, 6 was adjusted to pick up the dust left over, page 1-2 and 4 were left alone as you said they were a pass.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sf33vmra2d0ic ... 3.rar?dl=0
Come Hell or High Water, will come Hell and High Water
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O.O-Amy
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Re: Cleaner Test

Postby O.O-Amy » Fri Feb 23, 2018 7:32 pm

Hi, I'm the head-cleaner and would like to talk to you one-on-one to properly explain your new test. Please make a discord account and meet me in the Death Toll discord server. (This is not flirting, I swear!)

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