Update: eManga version now available!
Kanda is a normal grad student working on his Master’s degree. At the start of the new school year, his ceiling collapses and dozens of computers, two cats, and a strange man suddenly drop into his apartment. Even more startling, this quirky, childish, and disorganized man is Nazuna-sensei, a teacher at his school! Their unique situation forces the two of them to live together until the ceiling can be repaired. Kanda is annoyed that he’s forced to live with a stranger…but can’t quite bring himself to hate it. Nazuna Sensei & Kanda Kun follows a teacher who only notices computers and cats, and a student who's noticing him.
This is light and fluffy fare, similar to COTMS, and great for introducing someone to BL. And the cats are a riot. Seriously. :)
I liked it, it was a nice break from all the yaoi. However, who ever cleaned the raws didn't do a proper job since you can clearly see where the Japanese text used to be, and in some places they didn't bother redrawing or cloning when they should have.
ReplyDeleteHi lu-na nh, could you tell me what platform you're viewing NS&KK on, and if it's not too much trouble, could you provide a couple of photos or screenshots that show the problem? Is the erased Japanese text a problem throughout, or just in a few places?
DeleteMy high-resolution files came with a white background, and I painted the text out with white, so I'm puzzled as to why it appears to be visible in the final version, because it certainly isn't in the files I turned in.
If you tell me some page and panel numbers where there was insufficient redrawing/cloning, I can look into those as well.
Thank you for reading, and I appreciate your feedback. :)
I noticed when I was using the kindle app in my pc.
Deletehttp://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1q21x8FyY1rpzkuho1_r1_250.jpg
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1q21x8FyY1rpzkuho2_r1_400.jpg
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1q21x8FyY1rpzkuho5_r1_100.jpg
Actually, I think I only noticed one part that could have used redraw.
The pages seem to have a pinkish hue which is why it became noticeable where Japanese text was when you just white-it out. I think the problem gets resolve if you pre-clean by going go to image, adjustments, replace color, fuzziness 80, lightness 100. After that, you can level the whites only then duplicate the layer, set the opacity to 50% and set mode to multiply(beside opacity where it says normal), level the black on both layers and then you can flatten the layers. If you compare, you can notice the difference. I'm still a novice, so you probably might find a better way to pre-clean but this one is my favorite.
This doesn't seem to be like a big deal, but some people are looking for the tiniest mistake so that they can complain about DMG.
I posted links so I think your spam filter got to me , can you recover my message? If not I'll just post it again, but I don't want to spam.
DeleteOkay, now, for the pic with "He's a strange one," you're right, that was my bad. ^^; Takada has a lot of sketchy, broken lines in her background artwork, so I guess I overlooked that panel.
DeleteAs for the rest, I installed the Kindle PC app and downloaded the sample version. In both the sample and in your screenshots, I can't detect any variation in the background whites. I even zoomed in in Photoshop, and it all appears uniform (crappy compression artifacts notwithstanding).
Have you experienced the same issue with other titles from us or from DMG? I have not heard of other people seeing this particular problem, so I wonder if it might be something to do with your screen or display settings.
Would you mind if I shared this discussion with other people on DMG's forums? I'm really interested in figuring this out.
I checked another book on random(Nude Moments), and it didn't have any problems. Other books probably have the same problem but I can't think of any, and I don't want to go through 50 books to check.
DeleteI got two pages, one semi leveled and the other the normal one. There's is a difference in my monitor. Can you see it in yours?
http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/quierobl/20194747251/8/tumblr_m1q21x8FyY1rpzkuh
http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/quierobl/20194747251/9/tumblr_m1q21x8FyY1rpzkuh
I kinda feel like I'm bullying you a bit...
Lol, no worries, you've been very courteous and helpful about this. :) I haven't gotten such detailed feedback before.
DeleteThe first link looks white and mostly sharp. Photoshop tells me that it's actually a teeny bit off-white, and is saved in Grayscale. The second one is saved in RGB, and it looks fuzzier and a bit grayer despite being the same hexcode color (#fdfdfd) as the other image. Neither of them show any splotches where the text was painted out.
Oh, shoot, and I think I just figured out what the problem is. I started sampling random sections of the original files with Photoshop's eydropper, and found that the background white is actually #fefefe. And I've been whiting out the text with #ffffff. They're so close as to appear the same on a monitor, and even PS's paint bucket tool treats them as one color. But apparently, there are displays sensitive enough to pick up the difference.
Ahh, I hang my head in shame. ^^; I'll try your leveling suggestion from here on out. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. :)
I'm going to try to give out more constructive feedback for most of the titles I've read, so you been kinda like my guinea pig since you're my first. I hope everyone is as courteous as you.
DeleteI actually didn't finish leveling it, which might explain why it looked a bit weird.
I've checked your other two titles and they have the same problem, but it's less noticeable with I'm the Big Brother. I hadn't noticed it before because I was reading both titles in my e-ink reader. All in all, I enjoyed your localizations, and look forward to the other titles.
Best of luck! Most of the other Guildies I've spoken with are quite nice and would like more feedback, but I'm sure there will be some who take constructive criticism personally. :/
DeleteThanks again for reading/commenting. I hope our next projects turn out just as good, if not better.
:)
As always, I have two cents :P
ReplyDelete1) Don't forget that the Kindle format adds artifacts. The reason the first page looks crisper is because you've leveled away the artifacts. To be fair, after you've leveled, you have to run it through the mangler again so that you mimic Kindle conditions.
2) The leveled page lost the light gray tones on the shirt and sofa (I know, it's a trade off when you level), so I caution against precleaning tank raws too roughly since they are already so high quality. I agree that replace color is the best way to clean whites, but be careful with the blacks. There's usually no reason to hit them hard on tanks. (For the record, I'm not saying your method of precleaning is not good. I've used similar things in my past. I'm just saying it may not be needed in its entirety here).
I checked a couple of our own titles and noticed one with #fefefe background. My monitor does not detect a difference, but it's good to know that some do. I will keep an eye out for it in the future - thanks!!
(Sarah, I hope you don't mind me poking my nose around here.)
I don't mind at all. :) I don't have prior scanlation experience, so I'm sure there's a lot of tricks and techniques I haven't figured out yet. More info is always a good thing in my book.
DeleteYeah, I mostly buy from BN, even though I dislike them, because their titles are better quality. But my BN copy of Nazuna had a problem, and since I was impatient, I bought a kindle copy. But BN fixed the problem, and so I returned the kindle copy.
ReplyDeleteThat leveling technique doesn't work for some titles. For example, it would be horrible with I'm the Big Brother, so you have to use your own judgement, and figure out more alternatives. Maybe it wasn't a big deal(I don't really mind since it's not noticeable in my sony), but some people will complain so I thought I should give you a heads up.
Heh, I have yet to hear a positive review of Kindle's image quality for manga/comics. That, combined with Amazon's wacky censorship policies, means that if I ever break down and join the digital reader age, I'd probably go for the Nook, myself.
DeleteIt kinda pains me to have these first projects out there flawed like that, but I got the impression from DMG that it's not exactly convenient to be rereleasing books when they want to be prioritizing new books. And...my thinking is, it's been a few months since the earlier books came out. If the problems were that widespread, surely I'd have heard of it before now? I can optimistically hope that the ickiness is only visible in specific and rather limited circumstances. Unless a whole slew of complaints suddenly come pouring in, I think I'm just going to let these first efforts be, and chalk it up to a learning experience. I'll definitely be more vigilant from here on out.
I probably wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't reading on the kindle for pc. Maybe you should try DMGstardust's guide, it might work better than my tips. It also wouldn't hurt to check some scanlation guides.
ReplyDelete