[X] My Assistant

[puu.sh] http://puu.sh/aNVXY.jpg ori
[puu.sh] http://puu.sh/aNVYw.jpg clean

Please qc the quality of cleaning and redrawing.

Looks pretty good to me. The pattern has changed substantially under the bottom right corner text, but the finished result still looks natural. No harm = no foul. There is also a somewhat paler splotch on her green vest to the right of her chopsticks where I assumed the editor was trying for a shadow effect. It's moderately noticeable, though I suppose it isn't really that distracting. The lines in her hair have also changed a touch, but very minor.

UF

Use softer brush and opacity to blend the gradients on the dress and hair.

Too much?

A bit, but it works and looks good.

Working on editing one of my recent bounties and having an issue with the patterns present in it. Cloning the pattern just doesn't seem to come out right
raw:http://postimg.org/image/lz85zz0yn/
best attempt: [postimg.org] http://postimg.org/image/umvh85ekt/
also pg 7 raw: [postimg.org] http://postimg.org/image/au11hd351/
best attempt: [postimg.org] http://postimg.org/image/yuuuun5e5/
That is grabbing and matching each area to the pattern before applying and repeating. It takes forever and still seems a little off. Is there another way to go about it?
Also the images are originally indexed color which seem to not allow for most editing tools. I had to change them to work on them which seems to shift the color some. Is that acceptable?

I had to change them to work on them which seems to shift the color some. Is that acceptable?

If the pages are meant to be b/w then there's nothing wrong with changing the mode. That's how they should've been done originally.

Lesser evil?

It actually looks better vertical. The differing text sizes gives it a nice touch.

Many years ago, I tried to get this touhou doujin translated: http://ehentaihip.com/g/2323/9f7ad43060/ (fjord)
I was basically told that the frequent vertical text and narrow speech bubbles would make it too difficult to edit without mangling the doujin.

I just bought a compilation of PARANOIA CAT's works that includes this doujin. The existing scans are pretty bad and low res, which I'm sure makes editing it harder. Would having 3000px scans make it easier to work with? I assume the vertical bubbleless text would be easier to clean this way, but what about the thin vertical bubbles? And no, vertical text is not an option; it's just too damn hard to read English that way.

Sample pages from my new scans:
3000: [puu.sh] http://puu.sh/c0fps/f601ba6839.png
2000: [puu.sh] http://puu.sh/c0frX/d4ba04f2a9.png
Existing: http://ehentaihip.com/s/c0ba19fb07/2323-14

3000: [puu.sh] http://puu.sh/c0ft6/27157348c3.png
2000: [puu.sh] http://puu.sh/c0ftE/4bb9daff30.png
Existing: http://ehentaihip.com/s/7777083738/2323-10

The larger scans would be best for the freedom of cleaning. As for those pesky skinny bubbles, I'd suggest for the editor to just stack the words midway and not bother trying to Jenga the text chunks on top of each other, unless it actually does look better.

Would it make fitting text in a narrow bubble easier, or just for cleaning? Because if it's just for the cleaning, I could just keep a 600 DPI copy of that particular story, which should be even better.

Would it make fitting text in a narrow bubble easier, or just for cleaning? Because if it's just for the cleaning, I could just keep a 600 DPI copy of that particular story, which should be even better.

600dpi will be fine for cleaning, like it wouldn't matter. For typesetting, I was playing around with your 3000x scans and found changing it to 100dpi (without resampling image) would be best.

This post has been edited by Super Shanko: Oct 6 2014, 01:50

Is it worth sticking to the original design or should I just roll with a new one?
I feel it turned out kind of really shitty.
(ignore the white spots, I still have to redraw those. I totally didn't choose an obtrusive font just to do less redrawing)

Also, I just artificially enlarged one of those shitty thin vertical boxes so I could fit more text in without having to break it.
No one will ever know of my dastardly deed!

Having a problem cloning text out of a patterned page.
[www.dropbox.com] https://www.dropbox.com/s/a69kilu4ug8qwsp/problem.jpg?dl=0
What would be the best way to blend it in? I can't really figure out a way to fix it.

Can you post the image?
Usually, if the pattern is simple enough, some copy/paste and a smart use of the eraser can do wonders (especially an eraser with low hardness)

Edit: nevermind, found the page you're talking about. Yeah, go with copy/paste and a low-hardness eraser. Quick try:




This post has been edited by tiap: Oct 20 2014, 21:21

Wow, quite amazed that that result. Thanks for the insight. To understand you just copy pasted from left to right and used a low hardness eraser on the lines? I'm very interested in learning the technique as quite a few things I've done before would be easier knowing that, heh.

Edit: After playing around with it for awhile I can kind of see similar results. no where near as perfect as yours however. Any possible tips? I especially have an issue with how smoothly yours scales darker to lighter. I seem to keep getting streaks. Also know of a way to do the reverse? I mean scale lighter to darker. I figured burn but that had very bad results.

This post has been edited by Alex68785: Oct 21 2014, 05:50

Keep in mind that when gradients are involved, you have to move your copy-pasted portion perpendicularly to the direction of the gradient itself.
For instance, take a look at this example with a vertical gradient:



Copy-paste perpendicularly and all is good:



Do it any other way and you start getting nasty surprises:



In your case, the gradient direction was more or less the north-east/south-west axis:



What you do is copy/paste a portion and move it along the copy/paste direction:



The end result is already not bad (ignore the leftovers):



If you really want to be anal about it, you'll notice that the copy/pasted portion has an ever so slightly different tone compared to the rest (it's hard to notice unless you're looking for it). This is where the low-hardness eraser comes in handy: with it you can join two different gradients in a smooth way (I won't do it since there's not much of a point in this case)

This post has been edited by tiap: Oct 21 2014, 05:41

Thanks for the detailed walkthrough. That is what I was doing wrong. I just copied and directly moved right. On my first attempt it took hours of cloning and manually changing the tone with a light brush. Really thanks for the huge timesaver. never really worked with gradients before. or hell color at all even. Is there a better way to go from lighter to darker? reversing the process doesn't seem to work as well. Also I noticed this has much less then desirable results when working over layers. You mentioned covering up stuff etc how do you go about fixing the just turning transparent after you put it over text?

This post has been edited by Alex68785: Oct 21 2014, 17:26

Fixing the darker zones in your case is difficult because the dark colors are in the bottom left corner, and there's not much you can copy/paste.

As a workaround, you can try recreating the background itself. This shouldn't be too difficult in this case since the pattern is extremely simple.
1) Sample the colors at the bottom left corner and where the gradient ends (starts to turn completely white; I'm using the cover page for this example, by the way)
2) Create a new layer and make a gradient there using the two colors you just sampled. The gradient obviously must be directed in the same direction of the original gradient. You should get something like this:

3) Crop a section of the background and extract a pattern out of it:

You should get something like this:

4) Select All and go to Edit > Define Pattern (I'm assuming you're using Photoshop, by the way) to define the background pattern
5) Go back to the gradient, create a new layer on top of it and use Edit > Fill to lay down the pattern you just created. You should get something like this (which is already not bad):

6) Decrease the opacity of the pattern layer to like 70% or 60% to get something pretty close to the original:


After you have recreated the background, just copy/paste it onto the image you want to modify and erase every part above the stuff you want visible (basically, put the new layer over the stuff you want to hide). If you did a sloppy job like I did, you'll notice that the background layer has a slightly different tone than the actual background; you can use a low-hardness eraser to fix it

You mentioned covering up stuff etc how do you go about fixing the just turning transparent after you put it over text?

Not sure I get what you mean, but if your copy/pasted portion gets too transparent around the edges, you're probably using an excessively low-hardness eraser (the lower the hardness, the larger the radius of effect). You can use layer masks instead of the eraser (the result will be the same) if you need to reverse the effects.


By the way, I'm just explaining how I would do it, I'm not saying this is the best way. Maybe there are smarter and less convoluted ways to do this.

This post has been edited by tiap: Oct 21 2014, 17:56