[X] My Assistant

Okay, so EHT says they need editors, and there are quite a few posters who say they'd like to become editors to help speed up the translation process if they just knew how. There are guides to editing [senbonzakura.kageyoshi.net] here, here, and [www.unblessed.net] here, but in case people are too lazy to click those links, I figure we can use this thread as a guide to train people up to speed.

Okay, first off, I assume that you have some editing software more powerful than MSPaint. The most popular ones are Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.net, etc. Note that I use GIMP, so things may be a little different for Photoshop users, but the basic concepts should be the same.

Cleaning

First up is cleaning. I generally use four steps, though only the first is really necessary for most purposes.

Step 1: Leveling

The first thing you should do when editing a doujinshi is check if it needs leveling. Sometimes you're lucky and you don't need to, but often there's a grayish cast to the image, or there's a faint outline of the reverse in the background. This really needs to be eliminated to make the image look nice. See below for an example.



The best way to do this is through leveling. Open the Levels dialog box (Colors > Levels in GIMP).



The simplest way is to click on the black point picker (button with eyedropper filled with black) and then click on a point in the image you think should be black, and then do the same on a point you think should be white for the white point picker. (Use the eyedroppers for the input level, not output.) I do so, and I get this.



Note: Pick a point in the middle of the image. There may be distortions at the edges of the images, which can cause you to overlevel.

Step 2: Rotating

Now, if you've noticed, this image is slightly tilted. If you want to straighten it out, here's how to do it. In the toolbox, click on the button for the measuring tool (button with the compass in GIMP).



Then, pick a point on a line on the image that you think should be straight, and then drag your mouse to another point on the line. The tool should tell you the distance between the two points, and more importantly, the angle. I picked the border of the top panel, and the tool told me my line was 0.60 degrees off, so I rotated the image (Tools > Transform Tools > Rotate in GIMP) by 0.60 degrees to get this:



Step 3: Cropping

If you look at the bottom of the page, you can see a line indicating the edge. If we want to we can simply erase it, but let's practice cropping instead. Click on the Select Rectangular Area in the toolbox (button with a square of dashed lines).



Drag the mouse so that the selected area covers the image, making sure to exclude the part with the line. Then, crop the selection (Image > Crop selection in GIMP) to get this:



Step 4: Resizing

After cropping, you won't have pages that are the same size. That may not bother you, but if you want the pages in your edited work to be uniform, you should scale them. Right now, the image is 747x1069 pixels. I decide I want round numbers, so I open the Scale Image dialog box (Image > Scale Image in GIMP) and resize the image to 770x1100 pixels to get this:



Now your page is cleaned and ready for typesetting. That's it for the first lesson.

Next Step: Typesetting

This post has been edited by rookie84: Aug 14 2011, 19:43

What the heck's up with GIMP? I've been giving it a try, but compared to Photoshop, it feels broken.

Zoom: You can't zoom in/out unless you're using zoom tool? WTF? Where's the keys for zooming in/out? Or instant resizing (i.e., 100% size or fit-to-screen) for that matter?

Pen: Seems you can't change paths, or am I doing it wrong? Normally in PS/Illustrator, I could make a line, then create a corner point for sharp changes in lines. But I can't figure out how to do that in GIMP.

Is there a similiar function to the patch tool from Photoshop? It's a nifty tool that's similiar to clone tool, except that it works on marquee tools, while blending the outer areas to make the edges blend nicely (no jaggy or sharp edges that you can get with clone tool). Also, marquee duplication seems impossible with GIMP; in PS, once I made a marquee area, I'd just use move tool while holding down on ALT key to create instant copy, and by dropping the picking up the marquee while keeping the ALT key down you can create multiple copies over an area. Those two steps were what I usually used to edit my doujins.

I'll tinker around with GIMP now and then, but so far I'm stilling preferring the Photoshop's effecient capabilities. (Except for its broken pen tool, but I've been using Photoshop 7 so I don't know if it's been improved in the newer versions.)

Zoom: You can't zoom in/out unless you're using zoom tool? WTF? Where's the keys for zooming in/out? Or instant resizing (i.e., 100% size or fit-to-screen) for that matter?

Zoom in: +
Zoom out: -
100 % zoom: 1
Fit to window: Shift+Ctrl+E
You can also zoom by scrolling while holding the Ctrl key.

I've honestly never even noticed the Zoom tool until you mentioned it.

And that's without using alt, ctrl keys? I see, I never considered that specifically because there's an obivious potential for mistakes to happen if you wanted to use those characters when adding text. "Hmm I need to add a hypen here... hey, why'd my image suddenly zoom out?"

I hadn't gotten around to trying out the text tool because I was more focused on editing aspects, but once I tried it out, I now see that it avoids that potential issue. Kinda roundabout way I guess.

If you were curious, in Photoshop, you hold down CTRL while hitting those +/- keys for zooming. Double-clicking the zoom tool automatically zooms the image to 100%.

I _did_ say I needed some practicing wtih my editing skills, and that includes re-learning some of tools, even if it's on another programs like GIMP.

To be blunt, it's obivious that I'm novice when it comes to GIMP. Photoshop is different matter altogether.

This post has been edited by lightshader: Nov 9 2010, 04:35

Not to mention de-noising an image that has clear artifacts... as well as sharpening it.

Necroing: this should be sticky.

Just a note that there are some dead images in the opening post. Also, necroing again and requesting stickiness.

This post has been edited by Red_Piotrus: Mar 9 2012, 03:23

This is kind of outdated... there are a bunch of stuff in it that I don't do anymore, and some stuff I do that aren't in here. I'll put up a new guide in a bit.

You may wanna add a a sub category including a lesson about "hearts & various icons", as in hearts never being moved around. The lesson: Fuck those hearts! You're the boss! And "basic font positioning/centering", which might be sounding alittle nit-picky, but i've sometimes seen font smashed way on one side of the bubble.

This post has been edited by Super Shanko: Mar 9 2012, 12:50

You may wanna add a a sub category including a lesson about "hearts & various icons", as in hearts never being moved around. The lesson: Fuck those hearts! You're the boss! And "basic font positioning/centering", which might be sounding alittle nit-picky, but i've sometimes seen font smashed way on one side of the bubble.

I would disagree. I once saw a doujin that was typeset without moving around hearts in them- rather, text was simply typeset over hearts. That was plain ugly.

Also, seeing how rookie84 it's making an editing guide for GIMP, maybe I should make a similar guide for photoshop.

This post has been edited by lightshader: Mar 9 2012, 18:00

This is just a suggestion, but it would be nice to include a section about how to save the end product, since I've seen people making ~900KB JPEGs when they could have gone with ~200KB PNGs (or viceversa using PNG-24 for color images).

I would disagree. I once saw a doujin that was typeset without moving around hearts in them- rather, text was simply typeset over hearts. That was plain ugly.

Also, seeing how rookie84 it's making an editing guide for GIMP, maybe I should make a similar guide for photoshop.

Thats a good idea. If you get too caught up, let me know and i'll put up something.

This post has been edited by Super Shanko: Mar 10 2012, 04:08