LEVELING GUIDE FOR SCANLATION USAGE
Level is a tool in Photoshop and other image editing programs which can adjust the brightness levels of an image. It has the power to adjust brightness, contrast, and tonal range by specifying the location of complete black, complete white, and midtones in a histogram.
The Level tool can be opened via the ctrl+L command, but we recommend you get used to using Adjustment Layers because they save your leveling and any other kind of filtering from being permanent. Using the ctrl+L command will make your level apply direct onto the layer you’re working on, whereas the Level Adjustment Layer will create a new layer that – just as the name implies – remains adjustable.
The Level Adjustment Layer – along with a bunch of other filters – can be found at the bottom of your layer window. Click on the semi black and white circle icon to open the menu, and then click on levels. You can always come back to adjust the levels by double clicking the level layer.
Always make sure you change the mode of the image before you start leveling! If the page is strictly black and white and contains no colors, then change the mode to grayscale. If the page has color in it and is meant to be in color, then leave the mode in RGB. You can find the mode setting at the top menu of Photoshop. Image>Mode>Grayscale/RGB.
The region where most of the brightness values are present is called the Tonal Range. Tonal Range can vary drastically from page to page, however in black and white images they’ll often be pretty similar to one another if they’re within the same chapters.
Going from left to right we can see that the areas highlighted go from complete black to complete white. The Midtones are the tones that exist in between complete black and complete white.
Our main goal when leveling in scanlation is to get rid of dust while trying our best to maintain the Midtones as much as we can.
Moving the left and right sides will ensure that the areas of the art that need to be complete black (left) and complete white (right). Never move the middle. Only adjust from the left and right sides.
Dust is a kind of noise present in almost all manga and images. It’s usually spots on and off art that come from scanning physical copies. Our group post 2020 primarily works with digital raws which means you never have to deal with paper grains. The goal of leveling is to eliminate dust. You can’t start cleaning until you eliminate dust and you can’t eliminate dust until you can identify it. In order to identify dust you’ll need to use a Hyperlevel layer.
Paper grain is just the texture of the paper from the manga. When it gets scanned, the texture of the paper gets picked up by the scanner. So instead of a clear black and white image that the manga looks like, you wind up having streaks from the paper grain.
Notice all the gunk cluttered around the bubble lines? That’s what we call dust. The clutter around the text is also dust, but I didn’t highlight it so it wouldn’t be confusing that I highlighted everything that wasn’t white.
Now in order to physically see dust, you’re going to need to use a Hyperlevel since most of them are too light or too small to be seen and you don’t want to have to zoom in at 900% and have to pan the whole page to eliminate all of the dust.
A Hyperlevel is just a Level Adjustment Layer that goes above the first Level Adjustment Layer. For the Hyperlevel layer you should only move the middle to either the left (black) side or the right (white).
Moving it all the way to the left lets you check for the blacks. Colors that should be black, should be completely black. If they appear as a faded black or look like there’s light specks in areas that should be black, that means you need to adjust your first level adjustment layer.
Likewise, moving it all the way to the right lets you check for the whites. Colors that should be white, should be completely white. If they appear as gray or look like there’s a bunch of specks covering the art, then that means you have to adjust your first level adjustment layer.
So now that we’ve identified the dust in our sample image, we can now start the process of eliminating it. This is done using the first Level Adjustment Layer below the Hyperlevel Layer.
Start off by checking your blacks using the Hyperlevel Layer. Move the middle arrow all the way to the left.
Then go back to the first Level Adjustment Layer, click on the box with the number on the left side, and scroll up slowly using your mouse wheel. This will increase the number. Slowly do it until the faded black becomes completely black. You’ll notice that as you get closer to complete black, there will be some small specks near the line art. You want to get rid of them as much as you can, while trying to avoid Overleveling. By Overleveling, you wind up making the page a lot darker than it should be.
Next you can start checking your whites using the Hyperlevel Layer. Move the middle arrow all the way to the right.
Then go back to the first Level Adjustment Layer, click on the box with the number on the right side, and scroll down slowly using your mouse wheel. This will decrease the number. Slowly do it until the small specks surrounding the line art starts to disappear. You’ll notice that as you decrease the number, more and more of the specks will disappear. You want to get rid of them as much as you can, while trying to avoid Overleveling. By Overleveling, you wind up making the page a lot lighter than it should be.
Here is an example of how people will usually wind up overleveling. The sample page looks like this before leveling.
This is what it looks like with the hyperlevel check.
The issue with trying to get rid of all the dust is that you wind up making the midtones disappear. If you look at the screentones that are suppose to be the background – the trees – you’ll notice that it became a lot lighter. Those are the midtones we lose when we overlevel when trying to eliminate all dust. The line art also become slightly thinner because we’re getting rid of all the dust instead of leaving some behind. Overleveling can lead to crispy/sharp-looking line art.
Here’s an example of what overleveling black would look like. So here’s the raw before leveling.
This is what it looks like with the hyperlevel check.
People usually try to eliminate ALL the dust particles like this.
The issue with trying to get rid of all the dust is that you wind up making the midtones disappear. If you look at the screentones towards the bottom left where his suit is you’ll notice that the lighter parts wind up super dark. Those are the midtones we lose when we overlevel when trying to eliminate all dust. The line art also winds up looking thicker because of the overleveling.
In the case that you’re still having issues with leveling, I made a video explaining step-by-step my process on how I leveled those pages. If the video still doesn’t help you understand how to properly level then please open a ticket on our Discord server and I can try to stream and explain things to you live.
Unfortunately, my video editing program bugged out and I lost the last page’s clip so the video only covers 2 out of 3 pages. The values for the third page should be 2, 253.
Thank you to the following staff for working on this guide:
