Sunday, December 20, 2009

Ero-Otoko's Guide to Decensoring (Updated)



Alright, I fixed some typos, took some suggestions, added a couple sections and added a little explanation to a few parts. So, here's a somewhat better guide.


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23 comments:

Unknown said...

hey sup, have u thought about gettin comissioned for translating and decensoring h-doujinshi?

maybe ur just doing it for fun/hobby but as u know SaHa translation group gets paid to translate them and ur doing it for free?

well i just wanna hear ur thoughts on this.

Ero-Otoko said...

The thought has tempted me for a long time, but several things have kept me from doing it:

1) I'm a lazy man, and setting up paypal, emailing people, keeping stuff organized, etc seem like a hassle to me.

2) I'm reluctant to turn my hobby into a chore.

3) I'd largely lose the freedom to translate what I want. Granted, I could turn down a commission, but that's not the same as choosing to work on something because I want to.

4) Commission translators seem to have to go for efficiency to keep costs down. It takes a lot longer to translate, decensor, edit the sound effect, etc than just translate and I rather doubt anyone would pay 3 times the price per page to compensate for that extra time. Of course, I could just do quick translations, but then I'd be giving up the freedom to translate things the way I want.

I could probably say more but I don't wanna ramble. Don't get me wrong, it's tempting. Hell, I could change my mind and demand money tomorrow. But so far, the cons have outweighed the pros in my mind.

Unknown said...

thanks for ur thoughts I appreciate that. Keep up the good work! I'll do the same heh(atleast try).

Setebos said...

Thank you, Ero-Otoko. This is a good thing to have for those inclined to the artistic side of Photoshop.
On another note, I'd like to say you've made my world a better place with the work you've done. I only hope for you to continue in the way that makes you happiest. Thanks for all your work for the community and Happy Holidays.

Eijhu said...

Another wonderful guide. I like the edits and I LOVE the additions. Especially '3', transparent bars and their levels, should prove very useful.
Thank you very much, once again.

darsh said...

Thanks again Ero-Otoko. I have GIMP, but this should still work.

Ero-Otoko said...

Thanks for the comments.

@Setebos - Likewise and happy holidays as well, Mr. 'Commissioned half the ero-manga I've downloaded in the last several months.'

@Eijhu - Yeah, truth be told I was skeptical that that method would work until I tried it. I shoulda thanked some people for suggesting it.

Hage said...

Weird.

The level adjusting method for semi-transparent bars Oliver was talking about in the last post was what I was trying to describe. Me words don't use good though.

What I find kinda crazy is that the example you used for that method in your guide was the same image I experimented on when I thought my group would be translating Koi Suru Houkago a while back. Hopefully, great minds just think alike...

Ero-Otoko said...

@Hage

No no, I got what you were saying. Also, I forgot to answer your other question. Yeah, I'll almost certainly be working on more Futanarun in the extended future.

Anonymous said...

Well, it's fine, but more often then not you get the invisible dick's, "AV styled" distorted pixels, and many more complicated "types" of censorship in mangas.

Doujinshi are usually limited to the simple black line or feint distortions, but mangas can be absurd almost.

Unknown said...

Hey dude, quick question.

Your guide doesn't cover mosaics. Would it be one of those instances where you would have to redraw everything by hand (probably using the original image itself as a reference)?

nomonan said...

Excelente!!

it's a great tutorial, i¡ll try to apply some of those tips in the future.

Ero-Otoko said...

Belated reply to some comments:

@anon
Yeah, there's not much one can do about the light-saber dick, etc. Although I'm inclined to disagree with you. To my experience the vast majority of manga censoring comes in the form of little black bars.

@rebel
There's not really much to say about mosaics that hadn't been said already. A fine mosaic can be somewhat workable by basically tracing and redrawing. There's not much one can do with a coarse mosaic without trying to redraw the whole area (good luck ^_^). But you might be able to wait for it to be republished in a tankoubon, which tends to have less censoring.

Vinny said...

Nice guide. I've tried decensering myself before you wrote this guide and I was doing pretty the same thing, although I rearly used brush and never used clone stamp, instead I've copied needed lines or areas to new layer and used it like a patch. Maybe that's the reason I still haven't finished, it was taking alot of time - about 3 hours per box, is it the same for you?
Well, I was going to point out one tip I haven't seen on your guide: if you select an area with a box or lasso or something like that and then use brush or clone stamp it will only affect the sected area. I've discovered it only recently, will try to use one my work, maybe it will go faster, maybe I will even be able to finish it *dreaming*.

nomonan said...

is it ok if i translate this to spanish and post it to my blog?

Ero-Otoko said...

Of course.

Anonymous said...

Very good tutorial...

But, you left out block-invert censoring, which is very easy to fix... unless some yahoo has changed the size or resolution...

And, there's checkerboard-block rotation, which takes a bit more work, but it's fairly easy to learn.

Sam

Anonymous said...

Mosaics are what I called checkerboards...

They are fairly simple to fix... if they haven't been blurred...

You just figure out the pattern - usually 8x8 and select and rotate the block...

You'll have to do this many times on some artwork, but the outcome is perfect...

The other one is "block-invert" on colour scans...

You just select the area and invert the colours... if they have changed the size or resolution, you will have to do some clean-up of the border areas.

Sam

JukanX said...

Heh, I actually wrote a Photoshop filter before learning that there's a program (GMask) that can get rid of this rotated block mosaic...

Oliver said...

Hello Ero-O, I have started trying to train with Photoshop (I took the release of CS5 as a good opportunity), here are my reactions to your tutorial if you're interested :)

-

First, a warning, there is a big difference between my remarks and the advice you give in your tutorial. I'm ABSOLUTELY UNABLE to re-draw lines correctly, so I've developed other methods. But this makes me forever less capable for decensoring, when guesswork cannot make the job (for instance an entirely missing vaginal hole or clitoris), I have no choice but to give up on too complex pictures.

This warning issued, here are the little additions I can recommend, or the little other decensoring methods I can help with :

- control-h hides the borders of your selection. This is extremely useful when you're working on soothing the transition between your selection and the rest of the picture. The selection borders aren't distracting your eye and you don't risk to miss important discrepancies.

- Much faster and more accurate than Burn, Smudge, Sharpen or Blue, use Content-Aware when you end up with an imperfect, not progressive enough, transition between two zones having slightly different colors or different grayscale granulosity. Like the penis head in your 1-5 top of page illustration picture.
Simply select a 10-pixels wide area at the transition between your two zones, delete it and ask content-aware to fill it.
If content-aware produces lots of garbage, extract your "useful" work area into a new layer, and try again.

- usually, Content-Aware produces disappointing results but you never know ! I first do a Content-Aware fill, and keep the zones in which it has produced good results (deleting the others). And then, in the other zones, the vast majority of the initial selection, it's the good old way to decensor.

Oliver said...

- when you don't manage to re-draw missing lines, you can copy paste the existing parts of the lines just before the censored zone into the missing part of these lines.
Shortcuts for the newbs like me : L for the lasso tool (or shift-L to change from polygonal, to magnetic, to lasso), select the neighbouring line, control-c control-v (or control-J doing both), v to move the pasted selection with the mouse, and in the end (having tons of layers for nothing is useless) control-E to merge this selection into the main layer.
You may need to rotate the pasted lines to continue a curve or a line bending : control-T.

- I'm not very good with the clone brush, an alternative : just like for lines, it's also possible to copy-paste patterns or color zones.

- If, inside a censored zone, you know the zone will have the exact color (or grayscale pattern) than a non-censored zone somewhere else, you can :
. select the proper shape of the censored zone, in the censored zone, with the lasso tool or the polygonal selection
. do Select > Transform
. move the selected shape into the area having the same color/pattern
. double-click the selected shape : it will select this shape in the new area
. copy-paste this into the censored zone.
In this case, it works much faster than the clone brush, with more precise results

- Very usually, when it's very hard to re-draw a big and complex missing curve, and you won't have satisfactory results with an extension of neighbouring existing lines, you're in a pinch. For instance, that can be the "C" shaped transitional zone between a penetrating penis and a vagina.
. In that case, there is another alternative to having to re-draw the curve yourself with an ugly result.
. Zoom out and search the neighbouring areas for, hopefully, a curve having the same shape and the same proportions. The rest is simple, select it, control-c control-v, move it to the censored zone, control-t to rotate it to the proper angle and, if needed, adjusting its height or width. And there you are, you have the border between the penis and the vagina.

- when half of a round zone is censored, and you know the missing part is a symmetric reflexion of the visible part (usually : the clitoris, or bubbles in a stream of human juices), there is a solution much faster than redrawing or clone stamping : copy the visible part, paste it and control-T, right-click the selection, and have it be flipped horizontally and then flipped vertically : miraculously, we obtain a perfect fit !

There we are for the results, I hope some of these may help wanna-be decensorers, and maybe some of them you will find interesting too, Ero-Otoko :)

Oliver

Anonymous said...

Great guide. I do a lot of Photoshop work, and while there are a few other things you can do, you covered the majority of what I would try. I will say that one thing that really helps that you should mention is that having a drawing tablet, even a tiny one, can really really help with re-drawing lines. While not everyone can draw, in most cases, they should be able to eventually match up some lines given enough time.
I think I will be trying out some of these on some manga and video games I've run into, but I have to make sure I have the time. Also, a resource of uncensored manga and art would really help when you have to replace a section of a drawing or the entire censored area. Heavy censoring is hell to correct.

K'uroGami said...

Thanks a lot Ero-Otoko~
You guys are the best~