What Is The Scanlation Process & Helpful Tutorials?

[Letheliah]

Certain aspects of scanlating a raw may seem common sense to some, but even after reading manga for as long as I have I'm still not entirely sure how some groups manage to present a beautiful and clean chapter out of a grainy, SFX nightmare. _{I'm looking at you Redrawers. I'm convinced you're actual wizards.}
How do you citizens do it? What is the process? And for those of us who are curious or interested in joining a group one day, are there any tutorials that you recommend we look over to help us refine our skills?

For me, at times I feel inspired to scanlate those last few chapters in a manga that's seemingly been dropped right before it's finale (How infuriating!###), but I've a very limited foreign language vocabulary, machine translation can only get me so far with such short patience, and I really only know so much when it comes to cleaning and redrawing, ntm I'm very busy and don't have time commit to a group or to spend hours sifting through information online myself. It doesn't stop me from wanting to do it though.

So! If any scanlators would be interested in sharing their tutorials, tips, and shortcuts for their work, I would be more than grateful for them!
^{I'm mostly interested in the translating and cleaning/redrawing tutorials and resources, but if you have any tips or tutorials for editing or typesetting or anything else I'd be happy to put it here as well!}

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Tutorials, Tips & Resources​

General
Inside Scanlation's archived collection of various guides
Forever More Scanlation's extensive guides for every part of the scanlation process
Ruinevil's guide for cleaning, typesetting, and other tips

Typesetting
AnonBlack's extensive guide
Vorbis' guide
AnonBlack's Font Guide
Scanlation Font Resource Thread

Cleaning/Redrawing
Quick synopsis of Cleaning/Redrawing by M8E
Ruinevil's Photoshop tooltips
Ruinevil's screentone guide of what to do and what not to do
i-Lock's Speed Cleaning Guide (Italian tutorial also available) used with these Photoshop actions
rEaL0sT’s Tutorial for High Quality Manga Cleaning

Translation
AnonBlack's Translation Guide

Quality Checker
Ruinevil's guide

Other
Psychobob/Orneryjen's extrensive collection of screentones, patterns, brushes, links, etc.

 

[NZPIEFACE]

I would answer what I know about this.

But I couldn't get through the first paragraph because of the colour, sorry.

 

[Winstonite]

> machine translation
Please don't

 

[fianrt]

AnonBlack gives good typesetting guides on their website! Sorry on phone and type this in hurry - can't really take a link

As for cleaner / redrawer tips, I should say it comes out to your own imagination and practice practice practice. Seeing CL/RD stream also helps too!

-Fi, CL, RD, TS and QC for several groups ^^

 

[M8E]

RE @ Letheliah
I can answer that... I made a small introduction earlier, the English is crappy but understandable (I presume)
But as Finart said, it's all about imagination.

Spoiler

 

[akrolsmir]

This is the cleaning guide that got me started: http://www.insidescanlation.com/etc/How-to-edit-manga-with-Photoshop/rawr/editguide/index-2.html
Also, highly second AnonBlack's tutorials and also font guides
Finally, a lot of manga nowadays are actually available in digital form, e.g. at ebookjapan. This massively cuts down on cleaning time!

 

[Akeno]

To begin with, please don't use machine translation. Secondly, any part of scanlation takes hours, so you need to be ready to commit to them. Since we have multiple people doing different things, it becomes easy and fast to finish a project, but if you were to do it on your own, it'd be a long and painful process.
If you're still interested, I'd recommend choosing one role and fully learning that one before jumping to another. They all have their difficulties and if you try to learn everything at once, you'll be too overwhelmed. Between cleaning/redrawing and typesetting, I'd recommend TS'ing first, and as others have said, AnonBlack's tutorials are a good place to start. Though the most important thing with anything is practice. Even if you're bad in the beginning, you'll get better in time.

- PR and QC in several groups ^_^

 

[Letheliah]

This is the Holy Grail of tutorials and tips, y'all, THANK YOU SO MUCH! Seriously, thank you all SO MUCH! These links are exactly what I was looking for! They are so incredibly insightful. Did I mention I'm thankful?
Anyway, I'll look through these links and update the OG post now! (ง •̀ω•́)ง✧

It seems I might have unintentionally triggered some translators; do many people apply to groups thinking just machine translation is enough? I can understand the frustration then, and while I agree MT is lazy for official group releases and could potentially make an otherwise good release LQ, I think using multiple MTs alongside a dictionary is fine for desperate personal use.
I could beg all day for my favorite light novel series to be picked up again, but since it's been years and I'm obsessed, I've had to do it this way... BUT!— It actually did help familiarize some of the kanji and words for me, so... upside? LOL (^▽^

But mostly I was wondering, especially if Japanese or Korean isn't your first language, if there were online dictionaries or apps that you preferred or were particularly helpful in your translating process?

Thanks again!

 

[NZPIEFACE]

Please never release anything machine translated for manga and so on. I personally think it just wastes the time of anyone else working on the project. Even if you're the sole person working on it, please don't release it as you'll deter an actual translation from coming out (unless there's someone really passionate about it being accurate).
Manga takes a long time to scanlate. Not many people are willing to put in the time to do this. Also, please respect the work itself. The artist and author spent a long time working on whatever you're doing. Please don't.

On that note, the reason why there are so many machine translated web novels is that you don't need OCR for that shit. Like... Just look at Estelion's Secret Imouto for low quality work.

I understand if you want other people to enjoy something that you enjoy, but please don't use MTL thinking that it will be fine. Most times, there will be nuances in works which will be lost and actually require people to recognize and translate.

P.S. Go for it if you're the only one that's going to read it. Just don't expect it to be accurate. Even if MTL has been improving over the last few years, it still kinda sucks.

 

[Deleteme12]

i dont even know what OP had posted o-o
all i see are color codes... what

 

[Akeno]

I could see it fine the first day it was posted, but now it's the same for me @JazD801

 

[Srylanna]

My two cents for aspiring typesetters
AnonBlack's Guides are THE guides. They are very intuitive and perfectly structured.
Don't download fonts in bulk. I know this seems like a good choice, but it really isn't. Dafont is a great place to check out fonts and download them one by one building your collection so that you know what you have and what you need.
When typesetting, keep a track of which fonts you use and for what. For any given project I work on, I keep a list* of things I used.
Don't be afraid to modify fonts and their appearance via PS tools. It is what they are designed for!
Find a good and strict QCer or someone willing to take you on as apprentice. This is the best way to improve.
When shaping, follow the shape of the bubble. It helps a lot. Actually, any time you are in doubt, consult the raws. They are always the best guideline.

My two cents for aspiring cleaners/redrawers
I never used tutorials for any of this TBH. I had someone teach me the basics and then just experimented with what works so I am not sure what the best tutorial is.
Practice makes perfect.
For redrawing, don't be afraid of using the brush and going at it yourself. Most things can be done with a smart use of Stamp Tool, but sometimes brush is inevitable. Embrace it!
Don't be afraid to experiment. Photoshop is packed with features that you can use for your benefit.
Photoshop actions are your salvation. Learn how to best utilize them for repetitive processes you can batch.
As long as it looks good and matches the original, do what you think is best.

*Example

SFX
-Handwritten, irregular
--A Little Pot, augie, Cees Hand
-Handwritten, irregular, bold
--From Where you are, Blambot Custom
-Uneven, blotchy
--Pascal
-Fat, irregular
--Arnold 21
-Ugly, Irregular edges, chalky
--Bugghet

Small text
-Cupcake Smiles

Bubble
-CC Wild Words

Narration
-CC Jim Lee

Title
-Chinacat