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The current state of "cleaning" in scanlation

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Post #492499
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3:06 am, Aug 28 2011
Posts: 111


Honestly I'm surprised this has never come up, but the problem's become so widespread that I feel the need to speak out against the butchering of manga artwork that's so widespread today.

First, some background. Shading in manga is typically done using something called screen tones, which are textured patterns that print more easily and cheaply than solid grays. When it is initially published, manga is generally printed at an extremely low quality with numerous imperfections, then it's later compiled into a volume and printed at a higher quality. Many weekly magazines look downright atrocious and it was largely to address this issue that the Photoshop filters used heavily in cleaning nowadays came to gain wider acceptance.

I'm not going to point fingers (not that I'd know where to point my finger to begin with), but at some point, someone decided that ALL manga needed to be put through filter hell. With horrible-looking weeklies, this isn't a big problem. It makes the line work more visible and there are very little in the way of minute details to preserve with such terrible printing quality. But as far as monthly publications and tankoubon releases go? For the most part, cleaners should drop filters altogether and leave the artwork raw. The textured screen tones are part of the art work and don't need to be smoothed out.

Now, there ARE legitimate reasons these filters are used. For example, they can be used to decrease the file size when saved in PNG format and they remove some imperfections. But at the cost of removing such imperfections and saving a little space, even more imperfections are added and what comes out is a blurry smudged mess devoid of the texture and life of the original artwork. Anyone familiar with digital noise reduction in video should have a light bulb turning on over their head right about now, because it's more or less the exact same problem.

And now, the most exciting part of any Internet tirade: the visuals.

Here's a series I worked on a couple years ago before I noticed this cleaning style as a problem. (This series is called Yakuza Girl if you're curious. If you want my honest opinion, I can't really recommend it. bigrazz )

Anyway, here's the original raw with no filters applied. You can see everything fine, right? Barring issues with the artwork itself, of course. The printing's not great, but eh.
User Posted Image

Here's the scanlated version of that page. The blacks are actually black, which is nice! But wait, the dark grays have been lost completely, swallowed up in the black, and the remaining gray screen tones have lost all their texture in favor of a lumpy smudge.
User Posted Image

How about a more recent example? Let's look at To Love-ru Darkness. Just as a warning, the following example is NSFW, though I think it should be okay. It's relevant, and I've posted worse with a mod's approval. That said, I apologize, mods, if this isn't accepable for the forums.
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
As you probably know, this is probably the most famous ecchi series running at the moment, in large part thanks to Tokyo's recent regulations regarding what can be depicted in manga and the fact that it runs in what was once Monthly Shounen Jump. This may sound silly, but the fanservice here is highly political and there's an underlying reason it goes to print, so I'm not just complaining about having my jerk material ruined.

Here's a raw page from chapter 8. Again, not the best printing, but you can see perfectly well what's happening.
(NSFW)
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/52/darkness0843.jpg/

And the scanlation. Ignoring the jagged lines and the missing hair lines, Riko's nipple has been completely smudged and lost all of its detail! This is an ecchi manga, so if anything, the ecchi parts should be given the most care, right? I guess not.
(NSFW)
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/828/cxctoloverudarknes sch08.png/


Let me sum things up. This is why this sort of "cleaning" is bad for manga artwork:
1. It destroys the texture of screen tones
2. It erases many of the finer details
3. It creates a standard by which readers expect to see blurred and destroyed artwork

In the case of magazine scans, the original work is printed imperfectly and so scanlators shouldn't expect to be able to produce a perfect product. This obnoxious use of filters does not improve the artwork. It makes it worse.

I'm not against the use of filters like this altogether. It can be used to decrease moire when resizing if used sparingly and as previously stated, some particularly ugly manga actually benefit from it. But such heavy usage should be the exception, not the rule. A line needs to be drawn. Even in some weeklies, it's done way too much. I've seen images of the scanlation History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi where it looked like a female character had a bulge in her crotch... but a look at the raw showed that it was only because of filtered artwork. It's okay if blacks aren't perfectly black. The texture in the shading isn't an imperfection; it's part of the work. Scanlations are fan translations. As fans, we should be the ones most picky about preserving the artwork, not the first to destroy it.
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If you agree with me and see this kind of cleaning used, please tell the scanlators whose work you're reading how you feel. The only way to stop the destruction of artwork is to make the scanlators aware of what they're doing. For the most part, they don't have bad intentions.
If nobody agrees with me... then the standard of destroyed artwork is already in stone and this is a sad time for scanlation indeed. cry

Last edited by gringe at 1:08 am, Aug 31 2011

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3:12 am, Aug 28 2011
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[retracted statement]

Last edited by farkenell at 3:21 am, Aug 28 2011

Post #492502 - Reply to (#492501) by farkenell
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3:21 am, Aug 28 2011
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Quote from farkenell
to me if people were so concerned with quality they should buy the manga.

Therein lies another problem. Non-Japanese printings are often vastly inferior to the Japanese version. Highschool of the Dead is a particularly egregious example of this, with many gradients lost.

Setting that aside, you're fine with scanlators ruining artwork as long as it's available to purchase? What about 40 years from now when you can't purchase it anymore? I've always seen scanlation and raws as a way of preserving manga. Try to find any random manga from the 70s or 60s, even in Japan (barring classics which are still reprinted today like stuff from Osamu Tezuka). It's virtually impossible. Manga is pulp, and it's tossed aside as quickly as it's consumed. With digital media and the Internet, we can have immortal copies of series running today for easy reference, even 40 years down the line. Unfortunately, with this kind of artwork destruction, it only serves the same purpose as it does to the masses: to be consumed quickly and tossed aside once it's done.

EDIT: Never mind, it seems you edited your post. Well, my point stands in case anyone else wants to make the argument.

Post #492707
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2:27 am, Aug 29 2011
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I'm guessing from the lack of response that no one cares? That's rather disappointing.

Post #492708 - Reply to (#492707) by gringe
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2:45 am, Aug 29 2011
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Quote from gringe
I'm guessing from the lack of response that no one cares? That's rather disappointing.

its not that noone cares,your argument is just too perfect bigrazz
personally im one of the few people who dont pay attention to these things,as long as i can read all is fine


Post #492711
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3:16 am, Aug 29 2011
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I think that kind of heavy filtering looks like arse, but it's almost always done on series I care very little about (or actively loathe), so it's never been much of a bother for me.

If I happen to try to "train" a new-ish editor who's only tried cleaning popular Jump manga before, I may have to tell him to knock that shit off. But it's a rare occurence indeed. (Since most people who start doing that seem to get pretty much stuck in that genre and/or just quit after a while, I don't come across them much.)

Post #492713
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3:21 am, Aug 29 2011
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I guess part of the problem is that manga fans are always told to accept releases in whatever quality scanlators deem fit since they are free and we should be buying the mangas anyway. For that reason, no one complains as long as the releases are legible. The rest of the problem lies in cleaners' understanding of how to use photoshop. I don't know what, if anything, should be done about either issue.

I do agree with you, however, that the original artwork should be preserved as much as possible. There's one manga in particular that I read where the scanlators practically destroy all the screentones in order to make the releases "HQ." This leaves the artwork looking sort of watery and flat, and noticeably different than the printed volumes. All that work the mangaka put into the art, photoshopped away...

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3:56 am, Aug 29 2011
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I can understand why they'd do it (it just looks so much cleaner), but when you compare the two, why would you want to? The 'cleaned' one just looks unnatural, and I sure as hell wouldn't read it.

Quote from gringe
Non-Japanese printings are often vastly inferior to the Japanese version. High School of the Dead is a particularly egregious example of this, with many gradients lost.

I don't know about High School of the Dead, but I compared a few series (all different publishers) I own to the raws and they look pretty much the same. The only gradient loss I've noticed is with some of the older manga I own (back when it was still flipped).

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Post #492806 - Reply to (#492718) by Turbophoenix
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12:00 pm, Aug 29 2011
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Quote from gringe
Non-Japanese printings are often vastly inferior to the Japanese version. High School of the Dead is a particularly egregious example of this, with many gradients lost.

I don't know about High School of the Dead, but I compared a few series (all different publishers) I own to the raws and they look pretty much the same. The only gradient loss I've noticed is with some of the older manga I own (back when it was still flipped).

Well, it depends on the series and in many cases, the pages themselves. Gradients in particular don't make the transition very well. If the series doesn't use many gradients, then it probably won't be noticeable, but Shouji Sato's art is really dependent upon them. I remember seeing comparison pages of the Japanese and English versions of Ranma 1/2 a while back, but I don't know if I'd be able to find the page again. It probably goes without saying, but the comparison didn't look too good.

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I guess part of the problem is that manga fans are always told to accept releases in whatever quality scanlators deem fit since they are free and we should be buying the mangas anyway.

Less and less manga are being licensed these days (at least in the US) so expecting people to buy something is becoming less realistic, unfortunately. The could buy the Japanese volumes, but realistically, most people aren't going to buy something they can't understand.

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I don't know what, if anything, should be done about either issue.

The reason I made this topic was to increase awareness and hopefully get some opinion swayed in the direction of preserving the art. I would imagine that most cleaners just need to be made aware of the issue. Several of the big groups who do weekly shounen series are specifically designed to profit from ad revenue (not going to name names, but it should be obvious if you do a little snooping) so chances are they care about preserving the artwork as little as any other bootlegger and won't be swayed regardless of what's said to them. But I think most groups care a little more than that. If I were to go around posting this stuff on groups' sites it would probably come off as trolling or spamming, which is why I requested readers bring it to the attention of scanlators themselves. If readers start noticing the look and speaking negatively of it, then hopefully a change isn't too far off.

Post #493068
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rawr
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1:41 pm, Aug 30 2011
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Screen tones are not textures. They're side effects caused by the printers. If you look at works by the author in original BEFORE the print, you'll notice that they often have gray gradients instead of dotted screen tones. If the comic was published digitally to begin with, preserving 100% of what the artist intended, you wouldn't get screen tones. Therefore, the argument that removing screen tones are butchering the art is quite the opposite. The real problem is that you often tend to destroy other details at the process of removing screen tones.
Only in cases where artists fake screentones (which exists) does the argument actually apply.

However, in the example you gave, the filter clearly was not necessary and filters should be used given poor raws. Given poor raws, I'll happily use filters quite heavily.

Besides, I think the usual argument against "x sucks at y" is "do it yourself then". People do what they do because either a) it saves them time or b) they believe it looks better.

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Call me contrary but I prefer LQ. HQ is the domain of uber-Photoshop nerds and other random yahoos OCD enough to obsess over individual pixels. So the black in one picture is more like an 85% gray because it hasn't been levelled. Big f'n deal, that extra half-hour you put into one page is going to be wasted when I read it on my tablet with the not-so-fantastic contrast display and scale it down to 720px on the long side anyway.

Now I don't want to straight up dog everybody who puts effort into redrawing and fine-tuning and whatever because there are people that do some good work out there, and everybody would prefer somebody who puts 2 hours of work on a page to not working on any pages at all. But they should be doing that work because they like to do it that way, not because I have to like it. I would be just as happy if everything got dumped as a 16-color png.

Post #493111 - Reply to (#493068) by Grumpy
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3:50 pm, Aug 30 2011
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Quote from Grumpy
Screen tones are not textures. They're side effects caused by the printers. If you look at works by the author in original BEFORE the print, you'll notice that they often have gray gradients instead of dotted screen tones.


Not sure about other people, but when I was talking about screentones, I meant stuff like this:

http://psychobob.xepher.net/screentonez/

Actual patterns and gradients applied by the mangaka to enhance the artwork, not the Andy Warhol-style "newspaper" dots that emerge as a matter of course as part of the publication process.

It's the destruction of the patterns and gradients that is the problem with over-cleaning. (It's especially noticeable in shoujo manga since those artists use screentones a lot.)

Post #493119 - Reply to (#493068) by Grumpy
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4:30 pm, Aug 30 2011
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Quote from Grumpy
Screen tones are not textures. They're side effects caused by the printers. If you look at works by the author in original BEFORE the print, you'll notice that they often have gray gradients instead of dotted screen tones.

That is mostly incorrect, I'm afraid. Some people do manga digitally, but they're not in the majority, by any stretch of the imagination.

Quote from gainare_tottori
Call me contrary but I prefer LQ. HQ is the domain of uber-Photoshop nerds and other random yahoos OCD enough to obsess over individual pixels. So the black in one picture is more like an 85% gray because it hasn't been levelled. Big f'n deal, that extra half-hour you put into one page is going to be wasted when I read it on my tablet with the not-so-fantastic contrast display and scale it down to 720px on the long side anyway.

Now I don't want to straight up dog everybody who puts effort into redrawing and fine-tuning and whatever because there are people that do some good work out there, and everybody would prefer somebody who puts 2 hours of work on a page to not working on any pages at all. But they should be doing that work because they like to do it that way, not because I have to like it. I would be just as happy if everything got dumped as a 16-color png.

While I sort of agree with your sentiment, you have numerous technical issues in your post. The major one being that even the most stupid of the stupid, on the worst display ever, would see 85% as being grey, not black.

That's not why the unwashed masses keep trying to get rid of every last pixel of noise, though. They do it on (misguided) priciple, not because anyone will actually see the difference.

Last edited by lambchopsil at 5:51 pm, Aug 30 2011

Post #493170 - Reply to (#493068) by Grumpy
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11:09 pm, Aug 30 2011
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Quote from Grumpy
Screen tones are not textures. They're side effects caused by the printers. If you look at works by the author in original BEFORE the print, you'll notice that they often have gray gradients instead of dotted screen tones. If the comic was published digitally to begin with, preserving 100% of what the artist intended, you wouldn't get screen tones. Therefore, the argument that removing screen tones are butchering the art is quite the opposite. The real problem is that you often tend to destroy other details at the process of removing screen tones.
Only in cases where artists fake screentones (which exists) does the argument actually apply.

I've worked on manga in Japan and every screen tone I used (and saw at the store I went to for supplies, for that matter) was textured or dotted, like the examples brid showed. Screen tones are still generally cut out and shaved by hand.

While it is unfortunate that artists who do grays digitally have their art suffer from the printing, trying to "correct" it only destroys other details like fine lines, so it's better for scanlators to simply accept what they have. It's basically like trying to polish a turd with a piece of crap. You might cover some of the turd but you're just going to get more crap on it.

Quote
Besides, I think the usual argument against "x sucks at y" is "do it yourself then".

Believe me, I do, but I can't possibly re-edit every series I might possibly enjoy that's been butchered by crappy flat cleaning. I've even had crappy cleaners come and tell me that MY raws look hideous because I don't destroy them.

Post #493171 - Reply to (#493111) by brid
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rawr
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11:14 pm, Aug 30 2011
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Quote from brid
Not sure about other people, but when I was talking about screentones, I meant stuff like this:

http://psychobob.xepher.net/screentonez/

Actual patterns and gradients applied by the mangaka to enhance the artwork, not the Andy Warhol-style "newspaper" dots that emerge as a matter of course as part of the publication process.

Yes, more specifically, I did mean halftones which was a poor wording on my end. But I do often seen people arguing for preserving halftones and calling them screentones (which isn't entirely wrong - which i'm also now guilty of).
Quote from pnyxtr
That is mostly incorrect, I'm afraid. Some people do manga digitally, but they're not in the majority, by any stretch of the imagination.

I didn't say or imply that they were the majority... but...
It's true lot of people do the outlines still on paper, but when it comes to filling it in or doing final touch ups, it's standard now to use a computer. It would be stupid not to. It's way faster to do it on a computer than on paper. I'd be surprised if you can show me recent evidence that proves otherwise. Even an article back from 2007 says it's typical to color/finalize in computer and it's talking about mangas.

Quote from gringe
Believe me, I do, but I can't possibly re-edit every series I might possibly enjoy that's been butchered by crappy flat cleaning. I've even had crappy cleaners come and tell me that MY raws look hideous because I don't destroy them.
But that's the point! Everyone does what they like because it's their hobby. Who is anyone else to say that they should do it differently? If you hate "crappy cleaners" telling you what to do. Why would they like having anyone else telling them what to do?

Last edited by Grumpy at 11:45 pm, Aug 30 2011

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