Typesetting fun!

Adventures in Typesetting...

Okay so you want to typeset right? Well the first thing you need to know about are fonts. Different groups use different fonts for the primary text. One of the most common is Wild Words. Wild words can be found at the idiots guide to editing manga site under typesetting then fonts. Another group I edit for requires that I use Balloon lettering as my primary font. Both groups I work for allow me to choose my own font for SFX. Not only that but I can really play with the SFX's too, more on that later.

So you have your nice shiny new fonts, you might be wondering just what do you do with them and how do you get your program to know you have them right? Well when you download a font it is normally in a zip file. So first you need to unzip the file. Then select the fonts and move them into your windows directory in the fonts folder. If you had the program you want to use them in running at the time you did this then you will need to close the program and reopen it. Once you have done that you should be able to select your new font to use.

Now you need to set up your character palette and text tool for typesetting.

The character palette can be placed on your workspace by clicking on windows, then move the mouse down to character and click on that.

So here you make your choices on font and size. As well as leading. One option that I highly recommend is to click the (TT) this makes it so that all text entered in a text layer is all caps. This way you can cut and paste and avoid making your own typos.

Make sure that you have your text tool (T) set up to center text within the text layer. For most of what you do you will want this... There are a few exceptions.

Yay! We are ready to start now. If all you are doing is typesetting then you should have a cleaned scan to work with. That means that there should be no text in any of the bubbles. You should also have a text file with the translations open and ready. Just highlight the text you want to place in the bubble and hold down the 'control' key while you press the 'c' key. This copies the text to the clip board. Then go to your editing window and select the text tool. Make a text box over the bubble you want to fill. This automatically makes a new text layer for you. Hold down the 'control' key and press the 'v' key. This pastes the text you copied into the text layer. Now for the fun part...

Here is a cleaned scan ready for typesetting. I am going to make up words to place in these bubbles.

The alignment of this text needs to be centered in the middle. Currently it is aligned towards the top of the bubble.

This text is to wide for the bubble. Shorten the width of the text box or use a smaller font size. I would go with shortening the text box width in this case.

And this little text bubble is just right!

Notice that the "EH?!" is in a larger font. This is because he is more excited/agitated. You can tell that from his wide open mouth and the different style of text bubble with jagged edges.

Here you have a double bubble. And you notice the bad way photoshop decided to deal with the word being to long for the box. It split the word 'shame'. The font is also larger then the text to the right of it in the bubble. I fixed this by changing the font size to the same as the other text in the bubble. Additionally the text in the right side of the bubble is to far to the right.

Here is the text placed in a much better way. The font size is correct now and the word 'shame' is no longer split.

Now if you were also the editor then you have an additional help with alignment. If you were following in the erasing tutorial you would have used the rectangle tool (U) to erase the text. All the shape layers that were created from this tool are also in a group folder. Now we use the opacity of the shape layers to show the original text some to help up us line up the new text in the bubble.

In this example the opacity is set to something like 52%. It shows the original text at about half strength. Normally I set it to around 75% but what works for you is fine. Just remember to reset the opacity to 100% when you are finished or the finished product will also show the original text.

Some things to remember:

1) Always make sure you are using the font size you intended to use. If you click on another text layer to unselect the current text layer box, then the character palette will change all the properties to match the properties of the text layer you clicked on.

2) The point in number 1 can also help you. If you are using a standard font/size for most of the dialog then once you finished working on a layer with a different font/size click on a layer that has the standard properties you are using and it will automagically change things back to your standard.

3) If you have to split words to make the text fit in the box then do your best to split them in a way that makes sense. Sometimes this means that you will have to do the splitting manually by using the enter key.

4) You can play around with changing the dimensions of the text box to get the words to look good in the bubble. Try widening and thining the box until it looks right in the bubble.

5) Beware of dropped punctuation. What do I mean by this? Well lets say you pasted some text into the box and it looked like this:

HEY DUDE

, WHAT'S UP

?

Now this is an obvious example but it does happen and if you don't watch out it will happen to you. Especially with periods or sets of periods (called ellipses) like this ...

6) If you have a set of ellipses around text it is best to not split them up either. Sometimes you have to manually adjust the text so they are all with the word they are in front of or behind. If they won't all fit in the bubble that way then put them in there own line. For example:

...

HUH

...

7) Using copy and paste has one major potential issue. Fortunately this is easily overcome if you pay attention. That issue is when the translated text looks like this:

[the sky is pretty tonight...]

You often end up with this:

THE SKY IS PRETTY TONIGHT...]

So be sure to backspace that bracket/parenthesis out of the text box before you are done. Occasionally you might have picked up the opening bracket too so watch out for that as well.

8) Be sure to save your finished pages as a .psd file so that you can easily go back and fix anything that isn't quite right! Once you are sure that the pages look good then save them in the file format that your group wants to receive them in. (Don't miss the tutorial on batch saving coming soon.)

9) Once the chapter is completed I always go over each page in my image viewer. I use my image viewer because this is how I normally read the manga I've downloaded. By using the image viewer I see how other people are going to see my work. I am looking at/for the alignment of the text, brackets that shouldn't be there, split words, typos, etc...

Now we can move on to learn about stroke.

Or you can also move on to Translating the translation script.

Or return to the index page

	The character palette can be placed on your workspace by clicking on windows, then move the mouse down to character and click on that.
	So here you make your choices on font and size. As well as leading. One option that I highly recommend is to click the (TT) this makes it so that all text entered in a text layer is all caps. This way you can cut and paste and avoid making your own typos.
	Make sure that you have your text tool (T) set up to center text within the text layer. For most of what you do you will want this... There are a few exceptions.

	Here is a cleaned scan ready for typesetting. I am going to make up words to place in these bubbles.
	The alignment of this text needs to be centered in the middle. Currently it is aligned towards the top of the bubble.
	This text is to wide for the bubble. Shorten the width of the text box or use a smaller font size. I would go with shortening the text box width in this case.
	And this little text bubble is just right!
	Notice that the "EH?!" is in a larger font. This is because he is more excited/agitated. You can tell that from his wide open mouth and the different style of text bubble with jagged edges.
	Here you have a double bubble. And you notice the bad way photoshop decided to deal with the word being to long for the box. It split the word 'shame'. The font is also larger then the text to the right of it in the bubble. I fixed this by changing the font size to the same as the other text in the bubble. Additionally the text in the right side of the bubble is to far to the right.
	Here is the text placed in a much better way. The font size is correct now and the word 'shame' is no longer split.