Making Manga

We all love manga, and in order to be able to read it, some of us try to help the scanlation groups by translating, editing, proofing, etc.

The program I use to edit manga pages: Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Tools I use for cleaning: Rectangle Tool (keyboard shortcut “U”), Brush Tool (keyboard shortcut “B”).

Sometimes the image needs to be repaired after deleting the text, so it might need the use of Healing Brush Tool, or Spot Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, or even others. But for now let’s keep it simple.

I will try to tell you how to do this step by step, and show you in detail hou t use the Rectangle Tool and The Brush, at the level needed in editing manga pages.

First: you open the page you want to edit in Photoshop. Then you pick the Rectangle Tool, but be sure that your foreground color is white: that color is the color that your rectangle will have. Anyway,even if you have made the rectangle another color that you need, don’t panic! You can also Undo (Ctrl+Z, or Edit> Undo) or you can go to the layer’s palet and change the color there by double clicking the colored square, and then, in the color box, you pick your color and your color’s value.

Figure 1

After you make your first rectangular shape, it will become active the option “Add to shape” from the tool’s menu (right below of the PS’s menu). Rectangular Tool makes by default one shape per layer, so every time you draw a rectangle, a new layer will be created, so too many layers will appear if there will be many dialog bubbles. This is the reason why you should select the “Add to shape” option: this option adds the new rectangle on the same layer as the first one. So you will have as many rectangles you want on a single layer.

Figure 2

When you are done with the text bubble’s text, you can erase the sfxs. For that I usualy use the Brush Tool mainly because the sfxs are on the image itself, so you have to delete as little as posible.

So, Step two: create a new layer (Layer>New or Ctrl+Shift+N) and than pick the Brush Tool from the Tool’s Palet. Zoom in as much as you need to have a good control of the “erasing” (Alt+scroll). Than start to brush by “click-drag-drop” action, in order to create strokes. Brush Tool is very flexible: you can change its diameter, its opacity, its hardness. The diameter will be of interest for you in editing, so let’s concentrate on it. You can change it from the tool’s menu (by moving the diameter’s slider). What I usualy do and find it really handy, is – while havind the brush selected – pressing the square bracket buttons for enlarging the diameter (the right one) or for making it smaller (the left one).

Figure 3