Thank you for your application, FDViper.
I have looked at it and have an assessment for you already.
Your good points are that you crop and straighten pages well.
However, you have a tendency to overlevel pages. You did it in all of them. That is perfectly understandable if you don't have practice editing manga. Most beginners will try to get rid of the dust (white specks on black areas and dark specks on white areas) by levelling. The problem is that dusting using levels removes detail from the images. You can see that in all pages. Take a look, for example, at the character on page four: the details are lost in his eyes and the lines of his hair nearly vanished in some areas.
Unfortunately, there is no way to clean raws without knowing how to Dust properly, using Burning and Dodging. There are several methods for this.
If you go to our list of tutorials
here, you will find a good beginner's guide by our Head Redrawer, Sarrymast, which will help you to master learn how to level properly. It also has the technique he prefers for Dusting. Other tutorials there will have different techniques and you can choose the one that suits you best.
So, am I saying that you didn't pass?
Yes, I am. But keep reading and I'll tell you about our cleaning positions.
Right now, we have two cleaning positions open, both for
seinen manga:
Sprite and
Destroy and Revolution.
Sprite is the most urgent one.
Here's the good news: we are currently cleaning both series using Photoshop actions that do the hard job of levelling. The only thing the cleaner has to do manually are the tedious, but easy parts.
In other words, if you master Dusting and are able to run a Photoshop action properly, we will give you the
Sprite job, if you are interested.
And since I am really trying hard to get a cleaner, I'll even offer you a deal:
Instead of taking the test again, if you are interested in cleaning
Sprite, use the Photoshop Action and Instructions in this folder to clean the JPEG file inside it:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o3l59afpjjbmt ... n.zip?dl=0When you are done, send us the PSDs. If you succeed in operating that action to clean the pages in the JPEG properly, you are in. The instructions are in the TXT file.
(This action is specifically meant for these raws, and it won't work on raws of other series.)
If you want the DxR position, let me know and I'll send you a pre-cleaned page to see if you can dust it properly.
In case you decide to try, good luck!