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Manga Answerman - What Kind Of Raw Files Do Manga Publishers Work From?

Meanwhile, the manga pages that overseas manga publishers get from the original Japanese publishers are basically the same 1-1/2 generation digital scans / files that were used to print the comics in the Japanese editions. Therefore, they are “cleaner” than the “raw” 3rd generation photos shot from the printed magazine by uhmmm… people who aren't the original creators or authorized publishers of the material.

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Meanwhile, the manga pages that overseas manga publishers get from the original Japanese publishers are basically the same 1-1/2 generation digital scans / files that were used to print the comics in the Japanese editions. Therefore, they are “cleaner” than the “raw” 3rd generation photos shot from the printed magazine by uhmmm… people who aren't the original creators or authorized publishers of the material.

I'm not sure what you're reading that fits the 'scanlations aren't cleaned' idea you have, but the majority of stuff that scanlation groups release are highly polished, cleaned images.

How did you pull scanlations aren't cleaned from the article? Especially from the quoted section you're replying to. The author said official stuff gets official files from the source rather than having to scan stuff printed from official files from the source.

Author never said scanlators don't clean files. Never even suggested it.

I think the original question may have been missed.
The answerman was getting to it, but not all the way.

As someone who has worked in manga localizing as a typesetter/editor, I usually work from digital files that have been sent to the printer in Japan, which in this case is probably the "blueline" they were talking about. They're semi flattened, so I don't have to clean up dialogue bubbles - that's a layer I turn off. But sound effects and handwritten stuff has to be cleaned and redrawn still.

Some English publishers do still scan books I hear if they're dealing with older titles or just have downright bad relationships with their Japanese publisher.

And calling original art "Raws" isn't a pirated term. It's an industry term too. It's what we call the original source, and in this case they're the original digital art pages.

Thank you for clarifying. That was really enlightening! I agree, he focused too much on the pirating aspect and not enough on the person's actual question.

As a result, the image quality you see in the printed manga magazines is not as clean or crisp as the version of the same art you see in the printed graphic novel editions.

Meanwhile, the manga pages that overseas manga publishers get from the original Japanese publishers are basically the same 1-1/2 generation digital scans / files that were used to print the comics in the Japanese editions. Therefore, they are “cleaner” than the “raw” 3rd generation photos shot from the printed magazine by uhmmm… people who aren't the original creators or authorized publishers of the material.

Of course, let us not forget that scanning from the published books in Japan wasn't just the territory of those "other" groups. TokyoPop was infamous for literally importing the Japanese tankouban for some of the titles they licensed, putting them in the microwave to melt the spine glue, and scanning the pages to their computers to work with. The people at TP outright admitted doing this in interviews back in the 00s, too, which is kind of crazy to think about, nowadays.

Today, though, most newer manga have the benefit of having digital copies, which the companies here have the benefit of using. I know that Ed Chavez, back when he was with Vertical, stated numerous times before that part of the reason why he was hesitant to not do as much vintage titles was because there was no guarantee that there would be a digital version to work off of, i.e. it was more work (& money) to have to rely on physical material.

I'm not sure what you're reading that fits the 'scanlations aren't cleaned' idea you have, but the majority of stuff that scanlation groups release are highly polished, cleaned images. Every so often you'll find something really rough, like those scans from the Chinese version, but that's more an exception to the rule. A lot of scanlation groups, particularly those that are releasing titles that have yet to be licensed in the US, take great pride in the quality of their releases. So, to lump them all disparagingly like this does bother me.

Many scanlation sites use these 3rd generation scans of the printed manga from magazines as the basis for the versions of the manga stories that they distribute. Because these magazine pages are printed on rougher, lower quality paper, you'll see things like ghost images from the other side of the page, or smudges on the “raw” images that need to be “cleaned up” in digital image editing programs like Photoshop.

I remember in last week's chapter of One Piece, the official spelling of the World Government capital was revealed...which turned out to be "Mary Geoise" and was printed as big gray letters with a backdrop of a cloud-filled sky. I'm guessing Viz receives Eiichiro Oda's scans (considering he still draws them as ink on paper) without that superimposed text, or the text is in a separate layer so it can be changed, because Viz had already committed to spelling it "Marijoa" and the Viz version was edited to read that.