All pages readied for text, took a bit long. More due to goofins off than mad image doctorin'.
Looks like the 'blurred' image (I'm gonna call it 'filtered' from now on, sounds less retarded though more deceptive?) has lost it's brief favour. Should be noted these examples are extremes, done on an empty stomach, the pages I got ready now are only half as severe. I'm still leaning towards the 'filtered' pics, seem to be doing more good than harm, anyway.
I wonder who's on the phone? Don't spoil it on me Uglicus, I still haven't started reading. I hope it's her mom, I'm freaky/creepy like that...
Well, off to start in on a Certain Anime Spinoff.
Okay, I'm back and I'm fed. I can just do two versions, easy enough. I can see how it looks when it's finished, and how many downloads either version gets. Then I can decide whether or not it was a bad idea. Food is good for thought, eh?
Input's still welcome, from noobs too, sure.
On the left is the original, feels kind of 'harsh'? Center is darkened a bit, maybe too much. On the right, I blurred the image and superimposed the original over it, erasing the blurred layer in certain spots like the dude's hair and the girl's eyes.
I'm concerned about altering the artwork too much, but what I'm hoping to do here is compensate for the printing and the scanning. A more dramatic/less relevant example.
I was thinking I preferred the blurred image, the textures are certainly improved but the lines are, well, blurred. That too's an improvement in some places. Now I'm not so sure, so fuck it, here we are.
I will get to some real editing tonight, gotta step out for a few hours first.
I'd go for the blurred image. It gave the images more depth/3d'ness than other images and blurred lines aren't obvious. The original had very thin and sharp lines especially just like the windows in the background compared to the blurred image.
ReplyDeleteJust an opinion of a noob reader.
I prefer the blurred image. Like Reich said, it gives the image more depth and will make it easier to pick up on smaller details on the page.
ReplyDeleteThe darkened images are an obvious improvement over the originals, but I agree that the blurred are the best.
ReplyDeleteSo it's unanimous so far. Between us four.
ReplyDeleteWith this one it's turning out to be kinda hard to fix all those little streaks in the image. 'Heal selection's just no working its usual magic on 'em. Very hard on the eyes, too.
I want to be careful with this one. Always am, of course, but while I haven't read a word of it yet oh mah fuck that girl so cuute.
personally i hate blurred images, they always loose something the original had. if anything go darkened.
ReplyDeletewhen i look at manga i always zoom in, to more or less fill the screen. zoomed in its obvious that the blurred was blurred and its distracting.
darkened is ok, because not much detail is lost, but there is some, look at the shaded areas, that are shaded with lines.
in all honesty original looks the best.
so you know i'm using a 1920x1200 monitor and am zooming in to 161% and i went with double size too at 200%
The higher contrast has it's merits, but the aliasing is noticeable and the original is better overall.
ReplyDeleteVoted in the poll, but I prefer the original, really.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a preference. I can see the difference but there's just nothing which makes one better as the other. So I'd say stick with the original and save yourself the extra work.
ReplyDeleteThe blurred kinda hurts my eyes a little...
ReplyDeleteI usually read manga on a 37 inches screen at 1280x720, and both the blurred and the darkened version's flaws are obvious. Even though the original isn't that good, it has more detail than both of them.
ReplyDeleteHooray, discourse!
ReplyDeleteI will have the two versions, at least. Three might be overkill. I am aware of the loss of detail, but I (as of last night anyway) feel it's mostly worth it.
I'm noticing in certain spots what looks like damage to the shading, very similar to what happens when I go to far with my 'meddlings'. It's not always there, not in very faint areas (like areolae :) ), so it may be intentional. Might try to look up some magazine scans tonight for reference.
The process itself is no real trouble, it is almost exactly the same as what I do to clean out the artefacts. This is what gave me the idea in the first place 'cause yeah, 'blurring' the image to make it look better sounds dumb as hell.
The blurred image looks better when zoomed out, there are less moire artifacts.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit of a purist, so anything other than blurred. I basically don't think "soft filtering" (superimposed blur) looks that great anyway or solves perceptual problems. It makes it feel like I need to clean my eyeglasses and I don't know what it's supposed to improve. Aliasing and moire is a fact of life in these kinds of sharp raster graphics. The only cure is higher resolution, but if we're not the ones doing then scanning, then I'd rather settle with an accurate scan than a post-blurred one. I generally dislike the idea of reducing the quality of something in order to accommodate some people -- in this case, people viewing through bad resampling engines (people who are "zooming out" in their browser or whatever... maybe if they put on some dirty eyeglasses they will get the effect they want)
ReplyDeleteI'm no purist, but I'm a bit obsessive/compulsive. Cannot, at least, accuse me of being thoughtless.
ReplyDeleteI should point out I'm a hueg noob myself. I've been editing these things for a few months, but before that the only editing I'd done was cropping shit for wallpapers. I couldn't shoop a hitler 'stache on an American president if my life depended on it.
...chaplin 'stache is funnier, anyhow.
I think it all really comes down to the resolution the people are viewing at. At low resolution, the blurred looks infinitely better as the lost details aren't pointedly obvious and it smooths the textures nicely. At full res or higher, it just ends up looking sloppy and hurting the presentation as a whole.
ReplyDeleteIf it isn't troublesome to add in the blurred method, then by all means include them both. I feel it would be silly to not include the original though.
if you dont mind the text being part of whats edited, you can always set up a batch edit in photoshop.
ReplyDeleteits what i do for some manga, ill re release them is smaller sizes. its what i did for a few manga that decided to have a piss poor quality, and i mean piss poor, and have the thing be 120mb for a 17page chapter. i do it for some hentai too.
if you realy want to do something, start messing around with pngs. for most hentai, you should be able to get the png to about the same size as its jpeg counterpart but it retains all the original files quality.
I did recently figure out how to get reasonable .pngs, merging all visible layers before converting to indexed. Why do I gotta do that, damnit? Saving them as 100 colours, could probably get them smaller but I'm just noticing the slight differences when zoomed way the hell in.
ReplyDeleteThey're not too big, in one case they were smaller.
I have, again, given up on photoshop. All adobe products love to piss me off. I hate being 'that guy', but I just now updated flash, unintentionally installing some anitvirus shit, uninstalled that and photoshop while I was at it which required me to shut down Firefox for some reason... I wouldn't mention it, but that's the last ten minutes.
Not to mention photoshop costs more than my computer. I assume there's cheaper versions, and one very cheap option, but fuckit.
Final push on 'Mizuho' soon as I finish some more computer things...