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Hmm....
Installing Deleter ComicWorks on Usagi was a bit of an adventure. Oh, it worked fine, but upon opening the proggie for the first time, you have to enter the serial number before you can use it. The serial number is case-sensitive, and made up of numbers and letters. Can you see where this is going??? Oh yes, they did NOT chose a very reading-friendly font.
s2m: Is that a zero or an oh? There's two of them, and the first one is narrower than the 2nd. *enters the first as zero and the 2nd as oh"
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: Okay, I'll reverse them. *first oh then zero*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: Nrgh. But waitaminute. What about this plain veritcal line? Is that an uppercase I, a lowercase L, or a one? *tries them all as uppercase I*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: Grrrmph. Okay, then ones! *does so*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: .... Zero, oh, all ones.
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: *headkeys*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: FINE! *oh, zero, lowercase L, uppercase I, one*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: ARRGHH! *grabs paper and pen to keep track*
DCW: Incorrect code!
DCW: Incorrect code!
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: @$#!^%&!!!!
[five minutes later]
DCW: Correct! Welcome to Deleter ComicWorks! =D
s2m: .....
DCW: .....
s2m: I am no longer in the mood. *exits*
DCW: Heeeeeee. X3
For the record, they were ohs and ones. :P I'm just glad the proggie didn't have a limit for serial number attempts, since I would have been screwed. X|
Tonight after painting on the gift pic for an hour, I was once again in the mood. So I launched DCW. I've now been using it for about an hour, including the time needed to figure out how to import what I want instead of what the user guide thinks I want. Here are my observations so far:
They pretty much assume you're going to be scanning in pencils drawn on paper. When it comes to importing, forget Photoshop files. Or at at least, forget importing them as a beginning user. I couldn't import my .psd file of page 1 of my Vampirates Doujinshi and jump straight to toning. Instead, I had to save it as a flat jpeg and import it as a "rough" image for tracing. (Interestingly, the jpeg is 600 dpi in Photoshop, but after importing it into the DCW file I had to reduce it down to 25% of it's size to make it fit. The DCW page is the same canvas size as my Photoshop file and is also at 600 dpi. There's something screwy here, but I have no idea what.)
ETA: I figured it out!!! "Take in picture from file" in the Layers palette, but you have to specifiy the image's original dpi and what you want it to be in DCW. The default is 150 dpi to 600, and since my jpeg was already 600 and DCW was making it 600 again, the resulting imported image was huge. *does victory dance*
Tracing the image (yet again--this is the 5th time I've drawn this page!) is its own experience. DCW really is a manga-producing program. I mean, gray scale doesn't exist. Either a pixel is going to be black or it's going to be white. The pen tool is like the pencil tool in Photoshop. No gray anti-aliasing to soften lines, you have a hard edge. And no drawing vector curves, either. The pen tool is for drawing in stark black ink, like a real pen. (Note: you CAN use color and grayscale, but standard manga pages are stark black and white. This is almost impossible to achieve in Photoshop with a working image. Final output? Yes. Working image? Not without a great deal of tweaking and trouble.)
One cool thing about DCW's version of the pen tool is it's more responsive to pressure than the Photoshop pencil. You can set minimum and maximum widths (the user guide recs 00 mm and .34 respectively) and you can really see the difference when drawing with a tablet. Another cool thing is you can turn on line smoothing. So you draw a line and the proggie will even out the width to give you a smoother result. It has two levels of this, normal and extra-smooth. I'm pleased to say that my line drawing skills have improved enough that the smoothing option doesn't make much of a difference with my work! Except for very long lines, then it's good to have the smoothing turned on. :B But mostly, I don't seem to need it. :D Woot!
Like the stark black or white of the pen tool, the eraser is that way as well. You can also adjust the maximum width.
Some things I've already noticed that I prefer in Photoshop are:
You can't make folders in the layers palette. T.T Drat, I love folders, they make life much more organized.
Zooming is not much fun here. You're stuck with pre-set zoom levels of halves. IE: 12.5 /25/50/100/200% etc etc. Ttaku. I love drawing a marquee box in Photoshop and zooming in or out just as much as I need to for a particular area. I'm gonna miss that.
A whole new set of shortcuts to learn. Awww...I have so many specialized ones programmed into Photoshop. Maybe DCW will let me do that, too?? Dunno, more reading is required. Hitting "E" does NOT give me the eraser, most irritatingly.
I can't pull guidelines onto the pic. I'm not sure how I can tell where the safety and trim zones are. This is such a basic element of manga design, I'm amazed you can't turn these guides on or invoke a template or something. I guess since we're supposed to be scanning in artwork drawn on manga paper--that has the guides printed on it already--your artwork will theoretically be in the proper place from the start? Hopefully I just haven't found the option yet, but it doesn't look too promising.
No history palette. But at least you apparently get infinite undos. :| CTRL+Z FTW.
Stuff that DCW does that I haven't tried yet but am looking forward to using:
Rotating an image to find an optimal drawing angle without actually changing the image's orientation. Like turning your sheet of paper 45 degrees on your drawing board. COOL.
Ability to draw straight lines that aren't just on a 90 degree angle.
French curves! I've never been taught how to use them, but they are provided here. I should google on how to use them IRL to learn. :D
The inverse layer. A layer that will invert whatever contents you place in it when compared to the background. So if your background is a checkerboard pattern, and you place a line of text over it in the inverse layer, the contents of that layer over the black will automatically be displayed as white, and vice-versa. COOL again!
The white layer. Like the inverse layer, except anything placed in this layer will be displayed as white. Including tone. Automatic white tones, hell-o! XD Speaking of which...
THE TONES. ZOMG, the TONES!!! *jumps up and down* If I'm lucky in work and energy level tomorrow, I will hopefully finish "inking" page 1 (yet again...) and start toning. Heeeeee. <3
Oh yeah, and the icon for DCW is the face of a cute black cat that looks like Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service. :3
s2m: Is that a zero or an oh? There's two of them, and the first one is narrower than the 2nd. *enters the first as zero and the 2nd as oh"
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: Okay, I'll reverse them. *first oh then zero*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: Nrgh. But waitaminute. What about this plain veritcal line? Is that an uppercase I, a lowercase L, or a one? *tries them all as uppercase I*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: Grrrmph. Okay, then ones! *does so*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: .... Zero, oh, all ones.
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: *headkeys*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: FINE! *oh, zero, lowercase L, uppercase I, one*
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: ARRGHH! *grabs paper and pen to keep track*
DCW: Incorrect code!
DCW: Incorrect code!
DCW: Incorrect code!
s2m: @$#!^%&!!!!
[five minutes later]
DCW: Correct! Welcome to Deleter ComicWorks! =D
s2m: .....
DCW: .....
s2m: I am no longer in the mood. *exits*
DCW: Heeeeeee. X3
For the record, they were ohs and ones. :P I'm just glad the proggie didn't have a limit for serial number attempts, since I would have been screwed. X|
Tonight after painting on the gift pic for an hour, I was once again in the mood. So I launched DCW. I've now been using it for about an hour, including the time needed to figure out how to import what I want instead of what the user guide thinks I want. Here are my observations so far:
They pretty much assume you're going to be scanning in pencils drawn on paper. When it comes to importing, forget Photoshop files. Or at at least, forget importing them as a beginning user. I couldn't import my .psd file of page 1 of my Vampirates Doujinshi and jump straight to toning. Instead, I had to save it as a flat jpeg and import it as a "rough" image for tracing. (Interestingly, the jpeg is 600 dpi in Photoshop, but after importing it into the DCW file I had to reduce it down to 25% of it's size to make it fit. The DCW page is the same canvas size as my Photoshop file and is also at 600 dpi. There's something screwy here, but I have no idea what.)
ETA: I figured it out!!! "Take in picture from file" in the Layers palette, but you have to specifiy the image's original dpi and what you want it to be in DCW. The default is 150 dpi to 600, and since my jpeg was already 600 and DCW was making it 600 again, the resulting imported image was huge. *does victory dance*
Tracing the image (yet again--this is the 5th time I've drawn this page!) is its own experience. DCW really is a manga-producing program. I mean, gray scale doesn't exist. Either a pixel is going to be black or it's going to be white. The pen tool is like the pencil tool in Photoshop. No gray anti-aliasing to soften lines, you have a hard edge. And no drawing vector curves, either. The pen tool is for drawing in stark black ink, like a real pen. (Note: you CAN use color and grayscale, but standard manga pages are stark black and white. This is almost impossible to achieve in Photoshop with a working image. Final output? Yes. Working image? Not without a great deal of tweaking and trouble.)
One cool thing about DCW's version of the pen tool is it's more responsive to pressure than the Photoshop pencil. You can set minimum and maximum widths (the user guide recs 00 mm and .34 respectively) and you can really see the difference when drawing with a tablet. Another cool thing is you can turn on line smoothing. So you draw a line and the proggie will even out the width to give you a smoother result. It has two levels of this, normal and extra-smooth. I'm pleased to say that my line drawing skills have improved enough that the smoothing option doesn't make much of a difference with my work! Except for very long lines, then it's good to have the smoothing turned on. :B But mostly, I don't seem to need it. :D Woot!
Like the stark black or white of the pen tool, the eraser is that way as well. You can also adjust the maximum width.
Some things I've already noticed that I prefer in Photoshop are:
You can't make folders in the layers palette. T.T Drat, I love folders, they make life much more organized.
Zooming is not much fun here. You're stuck with pre-set zoom levels of halves. IE: 12.5 /25/50/100/200% etc etc. Ttaku. I love drawing a marquee box in Photoshop and zooming in or out just as much as I need to for a particular area. I'm gonna miss that.
A whole new set of shortcuts to learn. Awww...I have so many specialized ones programmed into Photoshop. Maybe DCW will let me do that, too?? Dunno, more reading is required. Hitting "E" does NOT give me the eraser, most irritatingly.
I can't pull guidelines onto the pic. I'm not sure how I can tell where the safety and trim zones are. This is such a basic element of manga design, I'm amazed you can't turn these guides on or invoke a template or something. I guess since we're supposed to be scanning in artwork drawn on manga paper--that has the guides printed on it already--your artwork will theoretically be in the proper place from the start? Hopefully I just haven't found the option yet, but it doesn't look too promising.
No history palette. But at least you apparently get infinite undos. :| CTRL+Z FTW.
Stuff that DCW does that I haven't tried yet but am looking forward to using:
Rotating an image to find an optimal drawing angle without actually changing the image's orientation. Like turning your sheet of paper 45 degrees on your drawing board. COOL.
Ability to draw straight lines that aren't just on a 90 degree angle.
French curves! I've never been taught how to use them, but they are provided here. I should google on how to use them IRL to learn. :D
The inverse layer. A layer that will invert whatever contents you place in it when compared to the background. So if your background is a checkerboard pattern, and you place a line of text over it in the inverse layer, the contents of that layer over the black will automatically be displayed as white, and vice-versa. COOL again!
The white layer. Like the inverse layer, except anything placed in this layer will be displayed as white. Including tone. Automatic white tones, hell-o! XD Speaking of which...
THE TONES. ZOMG, the TONES!!! *jumps up and down* If I'm lucky in work and energy level tomorrow, I will hopefully finish "inking" page 1 (yet again...) and start toning. Heeeeee. <3
Oh yeah, and the icon for DCW is the face of a cute black cat that looks like Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service. :3