Editor Guide Step 3: leveling&removing dust

[cubus]

Author: Suzu-chan

So in this step, we learn how to level perfectly...
I got two ways doing it...
First: the perfect leveling
Second: the fast leveling
the first way is taking a little more time and is done
differently for each page, its the better way for guys
without any experience, you'll know why when you see the
way itself in the pics down...
the second way is also a good way, but it leaves some dust
and its faster and not a pain in the ass like the first one,
but it should just be done if you got experience, as
you can screw the hole page up with this step...
with my little hints you should do it perfectly, both ...


Third Step: leveling&cleaning dust Part 1

You need to level because on manga raws, there are black/white
parts that got a little bit grey while scanning them...
that means we try by leveling and manual cleaning dust, to remove these...



so we use this page again...
i rotated and cropped it already, but as it is a very lq raw, it wont be straight perfectly... just if you invest much time in editing it...
but if you use better raws it shouldnt be as dirty as this...
ok if you look close at it, you can see that the black at the bottom got
many grey dots and the white isnt really white but a little greyish ^^
so first what we do is zoom in on a place that has some blacks and some
whites on it with much dust...



as you see i zoomed in that place...
on the bottom there is the black, on wich you can clearly see that it isnt
really black and on his face you can see that its not really white...
so now you open the level menu



ebene should be layers in english, not sure though... ^_^
a menu should pop up, when you ve clicked on that...
like that...



as you cen see on the left there is this black wave like thing.
this will change from page to page and manga to manga, describing it
at this point is kinda senseless as you wouldnt understand it, but
when you get more experience you ll finde out yourself...
then you see under it the black, white and grey arrow-like things. with them you are leveling, well you wont need the grey one,
but the black one and the white one.
okay now you make sure that the thing on the right bottom has a tick in it...
that is the enablung of a preview, that means the place on wich you zoomed, will change when you change that black and white stuff, but
just for you to see how it would look like...
okay now you take the black arrow and move it to the right until
you see that the black space is fully black(well not fully black, most of the times you cant make it fully black, as it will get over leveled, that means lines are too dark now, so you should check if the page itself isnt
getting to dark)
and then you do the same with the whites, until the grey is gone, and also here you cant remove everything fully...



this one is under leveled, this means the whites were done too strong...
look at the original and you can see, that the shadings under his chin
an on his jacket are not really viewable...



this one is overleveld, as you can see the black lines are too strong...
well overleveling with this raw was pretty difficult, so i needed to
do it so extreme...



so this is the perfect version, well leveling cant be perfect... hehe
but if you look closely at it, you will see there are still grey parts in the black and soem in the white that is called dust...
and now the manual part is comming...
now you just zoom in and scan the whole page bit by bit and removing
dust with the eraser for whites or the brush for the blacks...
dont forget, that this manga hadnt any patterns in it, for example a
very light background or weird bubbles...
you have to be cautious that you dont remove stuff, that is supposed to be there...


Third Step: leveling&cleaning dust Part 2

So this part is for the experienced people or people who want to experentise a little... ^_^
this is something i made up myself and it is supposed to make your work faster, but if you dont have any experience and you use it, then it will
just make you work more...
ok we go with the same pic like in part 1...



okay now as explained before you open the level menu, but this time you need to have a look at the whole page and as near as it can be, but the whole page ^^ if you understand what i mean...



something like that...
well after many chapters that i edited, i figured out, that the waves are telling something, they kinda mean how strong the blacks and whites are...
well i am showing you what perfect leveling looks like later... so you know how it should look like, but you wont be able to do that with all manga raws,
as all of them are different and all need manual editing after leveling...
well i did it like that...



the blacks are 90% after the first wave...
the whites are difficult they are not after the first wave, but a little before that... well you need to make that up yourself...
never the less, it leaves many dots and stuff like that after leveling, but
as this step is made to get it done faster
i got another special trick for you guys...




so that is the page two times...
so you can compare better and under it the settings i used...
as you can see when you pull the black to the white as much as you can, what will happen, but dont click on ok, now you can see, wich parts were supposed to be white and got dark now, now you know for sure
on that parts there is still dust left, so you press on cancel zoom in
and remove that dust if you can remember where the rest of the dust was
you open the level menu again and look at it again ^^...
like that you wont even miss a little dot, and you can impress your boss
or for whom you are scanlating by pointing out where he left dust ^^
so now that you know what leveling is about and what the goal is...
go exerxice until the next step is out ^^