Cleaning — Preparing the Art for Typesetting
What cleaning means in scanlation, what it covers, how it differs from bubble cleaning, and roughly how long a page takes.
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Cleaning is removing the original text and unwanted marks from the source art. The goal is to leave a clean surface for the typesetter.
What cleaning covers
- Removing bubble text — the original lettering inside speech bubbles.
- Levels and contrast — recovering greyed-out whites, especially in scans.
- Page furniture — source watermarks, page numbers, footnotes.
- Dust and scan artefacts — unavoidable with print sources.
Is cleaning the same as bubble cleaning?
No, and larger groups split them. Cleaning is general page preparation; bubble cleaning focuses on bubble edges, bleed and grey residue inside the bubbles. In small groups one person does both.
The criterion for splitting is simple: a series with dense, irregular bubbles justifies the second step. On clean digital sources it is redundant.
How long does a page take?
| Source type | Per page |
|---|---|
| Clean digital | 2–5 minutes |
| Good scan | 5–12 minutes |
| Poor scan / heavy SFX | 15–40 minutes |
These exclude redraw. If something behind the text has to be reconstructed, the work becomes redraw and the time becomes unpredictable.
Common mistakes
- Erasing the background with the text. When text outside a bubble is removed, whatever was behind it has to be rebuilt. A white rectangle is the most visible scanlation error there is.
- Over-correcting contrast. Pushing whites to make a page look "clean" destroys fine screentone and flattens the art.
- Saving intermediates as JPEG. Every save costs quality before typesetting even starts.
Related
A cleaned page is ready for typesetting — which also waits on the translation. The two tracks merge there.