Unbending bent lines that shouldn't be bent...

So okay you find yourself looking at page after page of scanned manga with some bent lines. Those bent lines are unsightly and should be unbent for the good of the universe... But how do you unbend a bent line you ask? I'm glad you asked. There are some tricks to it but in most cases it is pretty easy.

In the scanning process when you do not separate the pages from the binding and each other you end up with these bends on the inside edge of the page. When the manga has a box or lines near the inside edge, these lines get bent and it becomes obvious that this is a scan from a book. Our job as editors is to straighten out these lines and here is one way to do it.

At this stage I have separated this image from its evil twin page 119 and did the basic leveling. For more information on leveling check out that tutorial. You might also notice that this page has a bend that isn't your normal everyday run of the mill bent lines. It appears that the manga itself was bent before going under the scanner for processing.

If you know who scanned the page you can often have them rescan it. Since this is a large area of bent lines it serves as a good example for straightening out those lines.

Once you have the scan otherwise clean you can begin the process of unbending those bent lines.

Here is a close up of the bent lines on the right side of this manga page.

First select your line tool (U). Set the width for 2px and foreground color to black. Then line up the tool with an area close to the bend but where the line is straight. Left click on the mouse and hold it down, then hold down the shift key. Once you have both down draw a line to the end of the box. Release the shift key and mouse at the same time and it makes a nice straight line.

Holding down the shift key makes it so that you can only make a straight line. Repeat the process until all your bent lines have straight lines to replace them.

This is a screen shot from Photoshop showing a few things to look at when using the line tool (U).

As you can see from the close up here you have some straight lines but the old bent lines remain. The next step is to erase the bent lines.

I used the brush tool (B) with the foreground color set to white at around 4px in most spots to erase the unwanted original lines and the drawing that now falls outside the new box. Placing your mouse precisely and holding down the shift key while drawing, will make sure that you draw a straight line of white. This is useful when you want to be accurate and not have little spots that get missed.

So now you have all straight lines!

Here you can see the cleaned spots better. But please observe that there are now empty spots that need filling in.

When using any tool in this small of an area were detail is important you must zoom in. When I worked on these spots I zoomed into each one until that little section was filling up my screen. That way I can be sure I am reproducing/simulating the detail as accurately as possible.

To fill these in I used a combination of tools.

The first was the clone tool (S). I set the size for the clone tool based on the area that needed cloning. For the fine lines of hair I used a size between 2 and 4pxs.

For the screen tone in his hair I used a larger size. When using the clone tool (S) for such small areas it is important to make sure that the aligned box is unchecked.

In the case of the dark haired boy I simply used the brush tool (B) with the foreground color set to black and filled in the area.

For the speech bubble I used the brush tool (B) at 1px and the foreground color set to black and drew it freehand.

This is a screen shot from Photoshop showing a few things to look at when using the clone tool (S).

So you can see better here is another close up of the fixes I just did.

For more on using the clone tool (S) check out that tutorial coming soon.

And that is the basics of unbending bent lines that shouldn't be bent. Fortunately this manga was kind to me and there wasn't a large amount of detail I had to recreate. This page took me about 30 minutes to complete and that includes the time it took me to add the new text into the bubbles as well.

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	At this stage I have separated this image from its evil twin page 119 and did the basic leveling. For more information on leveling check out that tutorial. You might also notice that this page has a bend that isn't your normal everyday run of the mill bent lines. It appears that the manga itself was bent before going under the scanner for processing. If you know who scanned the page you can often have them rescan it. Since this is a large area of bent lines it serves as a good example for straightening out those lines.
	Once you have the scan otherwise clean you can begin the process of unbending those bent lines.
	Here is a close up of the bent lines on the right side of this manga page.
	First select your line tool (U). Set the width for 2px and foreground color to black. Then line up the tool with an area close to the bend but where the line is straight. Left click on the mouse and hold it down, then hold down the shift key. Once you have both down draw a line to the end of the box. Release the shift key and mouse at the same time and it makes a nice straight line. Holding down the shift key makes it so that you can only make a straight line. Repeat the process until all your bent lines have straight lines to replace them.
	This is a screen shot from Photoshop showing a few things to look at when using the line tool (U).
	As you can see from the close up here you have some straight lines but the old bent lines remain. The next step is to erase the bent lines.
	I used the brush tool (B) with the foreground color set to white at around 4px in most spots to erase the unwanted original lines and the drawing that now falls outside the new box. Placing your mouse precisely and holding down the shift key while drawing, will make sure that you draw a straight line of white. This is useful when you want to be accurate and not have little spots that get missed. So now you have all straight lines!
	Here you can see the cleaned spots better. But please observe that there are now empty spots that need filling in. When using any tool in this small of an area were detail is important you must zoom in. When I worked on these spots I zoomed into each one until that little section was filling up my screen. That way I can be sure I am reproducing/simulating the detail as accurately as possible.
	To fill these in I used a combination of tools. The first was the clone tool (S). I set the size for the clone tool based on the area that needed cloning. For the fine lines of hair I used a size between 2 and 4pxs. For the screen tone in his hair I used a larger size. When using the clone tool (S) for such small areas it is important to make sure that the aligned box is unchecked. In the case of the dark haired boy I simply used the brush tool (B) with the foreground color set to black and filled in the area. For the speech bubble I used the brush tool (B) at 1px and the foreground color set to black and drew it freehand.
	This is a screen shot from Photoshop showing a few things to look at when using the clone tool (S).
	So you can see better here is another close up of the fixes I just did. For more on using the clone tool (S) check out that tutorial coming soon.