I have question for you, FuguTabetai (or anybody else who scans mangas) - I'm under the impression that you do the scanwork for your translations yourself and in the same time seem to treasure your collection of mangas, am I right? My point is that most HQ scans I see on the web have the pages ripped out of the book bindings and that makes me wonder how do you manage to make good scans without shredding your mangas? I have couple of H-mangas I'd love to scan, but I don't like the idea of cutting the pages out.
On the side note, thanks for the hard work of translating the Tenjou Tenge manga, distroing it and all - so far I have found it enjoyable, at least for the most part. Thanks, really.
I scan the manga I translate myself. I do not de-bind the manga, but I do break the spine in 3-4 places. You can either heat up the glue (microwave or iron) to make it easier to bend the spine, or you can just give it a go yourself. Get two heavy weights (I typically use 2 full bottles of wine) and place them near the spine on either side. The goal is to get the manga as flat as possible.
After scanning, I typically have to remove the small shadows that are left from the pages not being perfectly flat, but if you open the book far enough, they tend to be small enough that you can just crop them out, if not, usually the paintbrush with a "soft light" setting on white does a good job of non-destructively removing the shadows.
good luck. Scanning, BTW, is the lamest, most boring part of the translation process that I go through.
It is also important (for me) to get the scanner-based shadow / contrast / highlight values set so I don't have to go back and edit the levels on the image. So tedious.
Just a little tip, how I remove shadows from scans. If the image itself is in the shadow.
You select the shaded area, then feather your selection (feather creates a sort of gradient selection, so the effect you use on the selection will grow less the further away it is from the border of your selection). And then simply adjust levels and/or contrast. Ez
i have a question is there not a scaner you just run across the page insted of breacking the bindings or even bothering with bending them ??? i think i have one but it might just be for black and white pics
if i were to define flcl i would say that it mean this 'its the human brain and the characters are the will of the brain...that big iron you see over in the distence is only a reminder that we only live so long...lets hope the things dont get ideas'
