Yeah, when you're in kana input your keypresses don't directly register to the program - in fact nothing registers as pressed until you confirm the conversion. So keyboard shortcuts tend to not work.

As for how you keep ending up in it, the windows shortcut to change IME is alt+shift, both of which are very common in photoshop shortcuts.

Yeah, when you're in kana input your keypresses don't directly register to the program - in fact nothing registers as pressed until you confirm the conversion. So keyboard shortcuts tend to not work.

As for how you keep ending up in it, the windows shortcut to change IME is alt+shift, both of which are very common in photoshop shortcuts.

alt+shift switches me between English and Japanese, but the Japanese IME starts in alphanumeric (at least on my computer), so I must also have accidentally hit shift+shift lock (that's easy to do too) to switch to hirogana input. As an aside, having shift lock activated does strange things to the cursor with some tool tips in Photoshop too, It took me some time and a bit of aggravation before I figured that out.

Sorry, I'm new in this topic... umm... the positions that are wanted are the ones in the first post right?
If so I'd be interested in being an editor for manga no tsukurikata but I'm still kind of inexperienced so maybe I should pass a test to see if I can do it or sth! I don't know >.<

try asking in the yuri project thread if you want to give it a shot.
http://safe.yuriproject.net/res/16016.html

they're pretty nice from what ive seen and as long as you are willing to accept criticism, they will help you out. everyone's gotta start somewhere, you know? and really, the worst thing that could happen is them telling you to take a little more time practicing and try again.

i used their editing tutorial (and some advice from someone) as guidance. i had never touched an image editing program before in my life and i think it was a pretty good first time.

http://wiki.yuriproject.net/guidelines
http://wiki.yuriproject.net/editing_tutorial

Yuri Guy posted:

they're pretty nice from what ive seen and as long as you are willing to accept criticism, they will help you out. everyone's gotta start somewhere, you know? and really, the worst thing that could happen is them telling you to take a little more time practicing and try again.

I've only personally interacted with Gulf Standard and one other person who volunteered to help with cleaning for Comprehensive Tovarisch but they've been pleasant to work with so far in my experience.

Excuse me if this isn't the right place to ask this, but let's say I found a picture I liked on Pixiv, (this) and I got really bored and decided to make my own translation. (this²)
Do you think I just wasted my time and should have asked someone who can actually scanlate stuff correctly take care of it or it's fine as is? (Also I'm sorry about my garbage translation. Please don't kill me.) If someone who is better than me at this (so anyone, really) is alright with telling me mistakes I made or stuff that could be made better, I'd be very happy. (And yeah, I'm too bad to translate actual conversations, so I decided to leave those untouched.)
Also, are there permissions to be asked to the author on Pixiv for this?

And again, I'm very sorry if this post has nothing to do in this thread. It's the first time I post in the forum, so I really don't have any idea of what I'm doing...

last edited at Feb 12, 2016 12:50AM

Labhubhul: "Excuse me if this..."

To try to dissect your questions:
1) It's not a waste of time. Most of the images that would have every right to be translated are not purely because of lack of time. Every image you edit is an image that probably would have never been translated anyway.
2) In general, it looks fine. The cloning at the top is seamless; the only think I could suggest is to use a grid function in the editor to make the top of the text in each block start at the same level, but that's a nit-pick that I had to search for.
3) If you're at all interested in translating in the future, translate those conversations. You'll never become proficient at it until you try, and small projects like this are the best way to get experience (no one will notice/care if you're a bit off in the translation for something like this). If you're not going to translate yourself, hop on Danbooru or something and steal theirs to get more experience with editing.
4) Consider joining a scanlation group. Especially if you're not going to translate yourself, having a steady source of words to put to the image will be helpful for strengthening your skills. If you don't join one, you can create your own and use Dynasty as a place to host your work ('swhat I did).
5) You usually don't tell the author of the original work. Some authors wouldn't mind, I'm sure, but there's a bit of tension between the Japanese authors and the foreign translations, probably in part to the redistribution of their work through means they're not directly a part of.

My authority on this: Last July, I revived the pseudo-scanlation group Fellowship of Freelancers and started working on editing images I like from Danbooru. I started out primarily using MS Paint with GIMP for putting text on in the end, and as I learnt more about what functions GIMP had, I switched over it it exclusively. I also found images that hadn't been translated, so I pushed through them, enhancing my knowledge of Japanese grammar and expanding what I could work on (http://tangorin.com/ is a wonderful site). The most important thing is, when I ran into problems during an edit, I would look for ways around it, either through tutorials for scanlation or general tool function tutorials (a lot of those on YouTube). (If you can find a group that will take a novice, I'm sure they'd help you learn the ins and outs of scanlation techniques.) It's always said the most important thing to do is start, and you've already done that. Your early projects will have problems that you'll notice once you've become more experienced, but you'll always be your own worst critic.

Other than whatever said above I always recommend guides from futari wa pretty anon. http://prettyanonymo.us/index.php/scanlation-resources/

You can learn a lot about typesetting from there and their guides are done in a really good order especially for beginners. Seeing as I no longer scanlate, the only thing I can really tell you as a reader is try to make the fonts engaging. I know most people like to use wildwords and call it good but if you actually branch out and use other fonts it makes your end product much better and give more life into the work you're doing. And the most important thing of all is don't be too lazy. It shows when you're posting releases. Quality should always be over quantity, therefore getting a QC is a really good idea. Like it's been mentioned, the more you do this the better you'll get. There are many different ways to do things so you'll eventually learn to do things that's the best for you. Good luck.

Thanks a lot for your answers, Shynaku, kouhai, it's really helpful.
I'll take notes from all you said, and hopefully I can get better at all that soon.
And really, thanks for the help. Love you guys. ^^

Edit: http://imgur.com/2iKSNkX I decided to completely re-do everything following some of your tips (using more fonts, using the grid to center the text, translating stuff correctly or just taking it from Danbooru for the most part... sorry about that) and I've got to say, it sure is fun to do.

last edited at Feb 17, 2016 2:33AM

I think it looks quite good — sporting the ol' CC Pulp Fiction. Not sure if you have already (I know there's a delay between submission and release), but go ahead and submit that one. Also, feel free to join the IRC channel if you're interested in chatting with the yuri-minded.

Thanks! And yeah, I fell in love with CC Pulp Fiction right away.
I actually forgot about this picture, honestly. I got too into trying to find random Touhou pairings on pixiv...
Shame on me.

Edit: I have another question related to scanlation. This time it's about sfx.
I've read a lot of mangas to see what people do about them, and I see it's pretty split; there are those who completely redraw everything to translate those sfx, there are those who leave them as is, and those who put them in T/L note.
I personally have been trying to translate as much as I could in the most recent things I've touched.
In example this page became this. But the thing is, as satisfied as I am about the result, doing it like this, it literally takes me hours per page.
Do you think it's worth the effort just for a sfx that someone could probably understand even untranslated?
And once again, sorry about all the questions.

last edited at Feb 25, 2016 4:15PM

I think sounds effects often come down to how much work you want to put into things. You did nail the most important aspect: make sure the audience can interpret important sound effects. Other than that rule, there are a number of ways to approach the translations:
1) Replace everything. This involves removing the original, redrawing the background, then adding the new text. Obviously the most time consuming (I know which project your example comes from, and I know it would take weeks to finish the entire thing if you go on that way).
2) Replace only the things that are important: This is my method, and my personal way of keeping my motivation up — I, personally, find sound effects tedious, and I would be less likely to work on projects if I did everything. This can still be tedious as you will run into nasty redraws, and it can look a bit schizophrenic when some of the sound effects are translated while others are not.
3) Place English text over the original. This one is common for larger and tougher redraws. I personally try to avoid doing this, but there are times when it would simply take too much time to redraw the details of an image.
4) Place a note under the panel: Also common, but it adds a bit of clutter.
5) Place a not next to the original text: This adds more clutter than putting it outside the panel, but it also makes it readable without moving your eyes around the page. I think this method would work best for your example page (pre-edit), and the size and position would be yours to choose from your aesthetic.
Ultimately, I think sound effects come down to personal preference of the group/individual doing them. The most important thing is: don't choose a style that will make you delay/regret/drop projects. And before I forget, the edit you did was really clean — well done!

Thanks as always for your answers to my silly questions. It seriously helps a lot!
I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I feel bad when I leave things half-done, but when I realize just how much time and energy it takes to redraw some pictures, my motivation really goes down. cough transparent speech bubbles are hell cough on top of wood and hair, especially
And thanks for the compliment! Really makes me feel motivated.
Edit: Thinking about it, I think I'll just keep redrawing everything. As time-consuming as it is, when I'm done with it, I really feel like it was worth it. Though there might come a time when my redrawing skills are just too bad for a certain picture, so I guess I might not keep going like that forever.

last edited at Feb 25, 2016 6:04PM

Transparent bubbles, yeah. There is a single case of a transparent bubble so annoying that even my fairly perfectionist cleaner has ended up just saying "fuck it" and making it solid.

I'm not sure what techniques you use, but for a redraw-heavy project like Sendai-Keine, this one might be a bit helpful:
Rather than perfectly redraw everything under a piece of text, do a rough sketch, put the new text over it, then trim the details around the new text. This ends up saving a ton of time on work that will be lost under the text anyway. Unfortunately, this is usually better for large bubble text and sound effects, but it might prove useful.
Here's my example. I removed the 海 and replaced it with a poor caricature of a cloud. After putting the English in, I touched up the cloud according to what you can see. The final image just shows how much work I didn't have to do to still get good results from the redraw.
Edit: Hair is, and always will be, your greatest enemy.

last edited at Feb 25, 2016 9:11PM

That makes sense. Personally for that page I showed you, I completely redrew it pixel by pixel. (which is very stupid now that I think about it, considering the size of the whole picture)
In some other stuff I did though, I first put the text in english on top of the original, then started editing around it.
On another note, I seriously need to stop getting side-tracked. Because right now, I'm trying to translate 3 different doujins at once and I do some pictures between all that... I'm very slow, too, so I'm getting nowhere.
And yeah, hair is evil.

Redrawing can be fun if you get used to clone stamp tool. If you have photoshop cs5 or later, you'll have access to content-aware fill and other tools of similar nature. The only downside to content-aware fill is that sometimes it picks the wrong pattern to fill, especially if you pick a very large area to use this tool on, so you might end up spending quite some time to either doing a whole bunch of small spots or having to set layer mask so it doesn't pick up wrong patterns.

Oh, wow. I'm using Paint.net and it actually is here. I didn't even notice it!
This certainly is going to save up a lot of time. Thanks, Kouhai!
Edit: It actually makes things way easier than I expected. I love you Kouhai.

last edited at Feb 26, 2016 5:44PM

I would seriously consider looking these guides over. The guides are designed around Photoshop, but GIMP (so I'm guessing Paint.net) has all of the same features. If nothing else, I found it to be a good way to learn what basic functionality the editors have.

Alright! I'll keep this in my bookmarks. Thanks Shynaku!

Well photoshop cs2 is completely free now so it's not too bad to pick it up

Oh? I did not know that. Do you think it's worth it to switch from Paint.net to cs2 functionality-wise? I've never used Photoshop before, so I have no idea.

CS2 doesn't have content aware functionality but it doesn't hurt to try if you're curious. You can get it from adobe's site I think.

Alright! I guess I'll try it out and see which of the two I prefer. Thanks again, Kouhai.

Hey, pkChinensis/other Lilicious people? We wanted to make a separate series entry for Love*Aroma, Love*Preparation and the first four chapters of Steps, but it would be helpful if we could split your Love*Aroma chapter in two (chapter and extra) and put the extra after Love*Preparation, following the tank ordering–how would you feel about that?

Hey, pkChinensis/other Lilicious people? We wanted to make a separate series entry for Love*Aroma, Love*Preparation and the first four chapters of Steps, but it would be helpful if we could split your Love*Aroma chapter in two (chapter and extra) and put the extra after Love*Preparation, following the tank ordering–how would you feel about that?

Sure, that sounds fine.