Contemplating from afar

For now more than 2 years, I have been cleaning scan by removing crease, text, filling gap, either as part of high quality scan correction, or scanlation job. Usually I do it in one hour, but I have feeling more and more the limitation of my methods… I have been using a trackpad for these job.

Before sending me to Arkham Asylum because I’m a crazy person who use a trackpad for Photoshop, I will just say that it’s more precise for me than a laser mouse. I have been using an Apple trackpad, multitouch one and one large button covering the bottom. In fact, it’s the best trackpad I have ever tried, other being sometimes a little bit too sticky due to shiny plastic, or too smooth thus being not accurate enough.

First of all, it’s a laptop, so aside of the trackpad which might seems absurd, I have been cleaning scans in my bed  ( quite fitting for my scanlation team ). Multitouch bring something new which is unequaled with a mouse, side scrolling. I’m not so used to using the spacebar for moving around a picture. Also, I don’t use any tap to click function, but the large button under my thumb so that, the cursor doesn’t move and I can still move the cursor with my middle finger without lifting it.

Apple trackpad

However, these last few days I have been a little bit annoyed. For most of my job I have been using the clone stamp of Photoshop. It’s usually really good and the trackpad is enough, until you get to do gradient, or whole redrawing. Yesterday text removal was heavy work. The doujinshi had half transparent bubble, so I decided to redraw the bubble so as to make a high quality job since it’s very good art. But some text were on ribbon… Maybe one of the hardest things to redraw with frills not too far. While I can use the pen tool, I feel that what I did isn’t good. Well you shouldn’t worry about the upcoming release which will be downsized, making many of my mistake invisible unless looking for them with a magnifier, but redrawing ribbons is hard, and I didn’t manage to make it look as good as the art. Well, chance are it’s also a problem with a mouse.

Another issue is reproducing gradient and correcting color discrepancy between pages. I think some scanner auto adjust their color between each pages, so color aren’t always the same between two pages. The problem is that when cloning from one page, the color doesn’t match the other pages. There is two methods to bypass this problem; either color match the two pages, which I never managed to do perfectly, or make a small gradient which makes the transition easy to the eyes. I usually use both solution, but making gradient is time consuming. In my current workflow, it requires at least 2 pass, one with the Clone Stamp with an opacity of 100%, another with at least 50% or less.

Color Discrepancy

So while I can do my jobs fine, it is quite hard with a trackpad, or even a mouse. That’s why I have been looking at graphics tablet for a while. A pen is much more precise than other device, and what I would really like is the pressure level which would greatly help for gradient. I have also some other things to do since it’s part of my course, but I’m still on the edge. Graphics tablet are rather expensive. I fear that Wacom Bamboo’s tablet wont be enough, so I aim for the professional line, Intuos4, but I also don’t know how I would perform with it, since my drawing skill are not very high… So investing in one is something I have been asking myself a lot, and C76 didn’t do too much good to my wallet. Chance are I will try to get one before the end of the year, or earlier if I need one for college… but the fear that it might end as a shiny shitajiki is quite high ^^;