The Way I Usually Do My Pictures Retouching : How To Do It Yourselves

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By Oliver (AKA the Admin) on 17 comments
in Categories: Just Talking

As you know, I frequently share retouched versions on Hentairules. And… in order to be able to do it yourselves…  would you be interested in knowing how I do it?

Let’s say you don’t give a flying fuck about retouching mangas like me: you can still learn how to do batch retouching on groups of images, and use it your own way afterwards ;)

There are certainly hundreds of ways to retouch pictures and fix mangas, however, regarding scanlated hentai mangas, I am ALMOST ALWAYS doing the two same things:
– adjusting levels
– smoothening the surfaces against surface defects (those areas with just one color or a progressive shade of a color nuance, full of visual bugs because of printing or scanning)

Also, let us not confuse it with my standard fully automated recompressions and resizings, that I explain on that other page.

If you have a manga with this kind of defects, to fix it, the way I do it is very simple. Here’s the how-to ;)

FIRST: Determine how you will retouch your images.

.  > Make a copy of one of the files to retouch, an image that “represents” how the other pics will be. That will be your test pic.

.  > Open photoshop (I have Photoshop CS5, I’ll simply assume more recent PS software behaves the same way. My operating system is Windows7, so if you’ve got a Mac, please forgive my mention of Alt- and Control- shortcuts, I trust you can find how it’s done in MacOS)

. > Open the copied file to retouch in photoshop. Unless this is a color picture, make sure it’s not tainted by vague color remnants, do Image > Mode > Grayscale.

.  > The actual picture fixing begins. For me, most often, it relies on

.  .  (a) Filters > Blur > Surface Blur. This smoothens, makes even, the surfaces, this is like magic! It can get rid of scanning or printing defects in a wonderful way.
I usually have Radius = 5 and Treshold = 5 too. To increase the effects if needed, leave the Radius alone and increase the Threshold. But be careful, a too strong Surface Blur eats away at thin lines (like blushing cheeks, or around the eyes), so double-check you’re not killing image information, that wouldn’t be worth it. Better do two times in a row a faint Surface Blur, rather than do a single bigger Surface Blur that will damage your picture.

.  .  (b) Image > Adjustments > Levels. Usually, my rule is that areas supposed to be black must be made to be black instead of grey, and I sometimes adjust a bit also the midtones.
Toy around with those two tools, check and uncheck the Preview button, this is self-learning ^^

.  .  better do several operations with weak settings than one operation with strong settings. Faint lines like blushlines, and hair lines, will disappear into thin air with too strong settings, for instance.

.  > When you think you fixed the picture correctly, save it (control-S), and compare the “fixed” picture with the original picture.
You think you made a good job? Great, let’s make it on all the pictures!

I mention a few other operations I perform relatively often, you may try them out:
– Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp mask; that gives a crisper impression on images that are slightly blurry. Don’t overdo it, but it sometimes gives a lot more “life” to the eyes and makes lines more noticeable.
– Image > Adjustements > Shadows/Highlights with 0 in Shadows and between 5 and 15 in Highlights; it’s useful for images that are not contrasted enough and in which the few dark areas are hardly noticeable, typically that makes the girl look flat and the volumes require a brain effort to be noticed, that’s what Shadows Highlights fixes.
– When you find that levelling or surface blurring damages too much weak lines or dotty areas, precede it with a Select > Color range > (dropdown list) “Shadows”, and then do Select > Modify > Contract : 1, this way you’ll only work on areas that don’t risk to be damaged, this is SUPER useful to avoid making thin lines disappear or very slightly screentoned areas shrink
– When you’re in preview mode try Control-H to remove the highlighting of which areas are selected, as it messes up visual comparisons.

SECOND: Save your retouching method as an Action that Photoshop will be able to repeat on demand.

.  > Do again a copy of the unretouched picture, open it again in photoshop. You’re going to do the same fixing as before, but this time photoshop will register how you’re doing it, in order to be able to repeat the operation later.

.  > Press Alt-F9, in order to create an “action”, a list of operations to run automatically on every picture.

.  > In that Actions window, bottom right, on the left of the recycle bin icon, click the “new action” button. Photoshop starts registering. Do your fixing as previously. Save (control-S). Close the image (control-W). Click the “stop recording” square icon in the Actions window.

THIRD: running that Action on the files that need retouching.

.  > Finally, in photoshop, do File > Automate > Batch, your latest saved Action will be automatically chosen, and then you specify the folder with the images to fix (do that on a beforehand-copied folder, not on the original pics, you’ll need to compare if you didn’t screw up later, and you wouldn’t want to treat the same way a color cover and internal pictures, right? ^^).
.  Run the Batch processing. The pictures are reprocessed, saved, and closed, one after the other.

. > Alternatively, if there aren’t too many pictures to do, in your files browser you can group-select the images that need retouching, drag-and-drop them into photoshop, and then go to the File > Automate > Batch menu, in which you will specify to perform the batch operation, not on a folder, but on the Opened files.

Check various resulting pics against their originals to make sure you didn’t screw up with too strong settings, also to make sure your picture viewer gives the same image results as in Photoshop.

And voilà, you’re done, you have your retouched version :)

Of course, as I wrote, there must be hundreds of different ways to fix pictures, depending on what fixing they need, and better ways than mine in the present situation, I don’t want to pretend I’m a guru (lol, I wouldn’t convince anyone ^^).
But I trust this simple method DOES work wonders and could, for you guys, out there on the other side of the internet tubes, help you with the grayscale hentai mangas we love so much :)

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HurpDurp
HurpDurp
11 years ago

I responded to your post on THMMY's blog.. Twice. Does the second one seem better?

Oliver AKA The Admin
Admin
HurpDurp
HurpDurp
11 years ago

:3

gestern
gestern
11 years ago

Pics tells a thousand words :D Adding some pic would be nice or even a video.
But this is a really good guide, thanks.

Oliver AKA The Admin
Admin
11 years ago
Reply to  gestern

Yeah, but then writing my post would not have taken me 30 minutes but 2 hours, lol, and thinking it would have taken two hours I wouldn't have done it at all :D

anon
anon
11 years ago

Huh. I prefer to use GIMP myself. That said, I originally decided I wanted to colorize Witchcraft by Yamatogawa…. so far, it's been almost a year, and I've done… not even 3 pages. I fail.
Anyways, for those unfamiliar with it, GIMP is kinda like a free version of Photoshop, but, afaik, it doesn't have ALL the same capabilities. Just a lot of them. (Of course, I could be wrong about that — I don't own Photoshop, and I don't design GIMP, so that's just my own experience talking.) For those who are interested in using GIMP, so that they don't have to pony up a crapload of cash for Photoshop, or for those who don't want to pirate it — yes, that is almost always an option — just google (or w/e search engine you use) "GIMP image editor". The tutorials on the site are great.

HurpDurp
HurpDurp
11 years ago
Reply to  anon

GIMP has about 2/100th of Photoshop's abilities :x

Also

>paying for photoshop

wut.

Oliver AKA The Admin
Admin
11 years ago
Reply to  HurpDurp

When I had my company, all our retouchings were made with Gimp. Why ? Nothing illegal on corporate hardware.

At that time, I didn't know how to use Photoshop yet, so I couldn't get bitter about it – and, thinking back, we managed to do everything we needed, it IS possible to use Gimp for nearly everything. Gimp is lacking in a few regards (real texts management and blending options would be the biggest lacking element, I think), but apart from that, it's all about getting used to an interface. Really.

HurpDurp
HurpDurp
11 years ago

Yeah, but companies bulk purchase applications and get them at a discounted price. A normal everyday person/scanlator, such as us, wouldn't have that discount and have to pay the full price.

Also, I've never seen or heard of a scanlator who purchased it legally.

anon
anon
11 years ago

Wait, you had a company? Either I missed something, or you never mentioned this before; either way, do tell!

Oliver AKA The Admin
Admin
11 years ago
Reply to  anon

I had a company selling babycare products, we went under two summers ago, the profit margin fell below the fixed costs, so we threw the towel.

I'm now working from home, for – ironically, I make a better living like that – former competitors, handing their catalogues and backend stuff.

Oliver AKA The Admin
Admin
11 years ago
Reply to  anon

From my experience, with Gimp I could do EVERYTHING I'm doing usually with photoshop, save

– text effects. Photoshop allows to stack effects, with a large variety of effects, and with extremely high customization, including the areas in which type will be placed and how it will be placed in there. Gimp doesn't allow it, or allows only a part of it in exchange of huge complications and loss of time

– blending : you select a layer, and you whatever you want out of it, oh god that's useful

– automation : photoshop made it perfectly easy

otosan
otosan
11 years ago

Sometimes when you tamper with levels or with saturation, you are changing grays to black and you can totally cover things which could be helpful in decensoring, so be carefull ;)

Oliver AKA The Admin
Admin
11 years ago
Reply to  otosan

hear, hear !

taskan
taskan
11 years ago

Oliver, i think you should make a video :”))

Oliver AKA The Admin
Admin
11 years ago
Reply to  taskan

If I had to take the time to make a vid… I wouldn't have done it at all, frankly.

voo
voo
11 years ago

Imo: There really is no reason to use the destructive leveling tool in 99.999% of all cases. Just use an adjustment layer and tweak that as needed; same amount of work and non-destructive.

People love to overdo the blacks; on lots of cheap magazine scans if you try to make all blacks black by leveling you end up with burned images, which imo is worse than some grey areas.

A good guess for the worse scans is usually diffuse + leveling + high pass sharpening. I've seen people use that or some denoise tools on tanks though *shudder*