Phanzanu's Typesetting Guide

[phanzanu]

How to Typeset
by phanzanu/phanpy
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In this guide/tutorial, I'll be sharing how I do things. This won't be the best way to do it, or the way everyone should do it. This is just the way that works best for me.

I am not a Typesetter/Letterer by profession, so I can and will make mistakes. Feel free to point those out or discuss any typesetting-related topic in the comments below!

☆ ★ Table of Contents ★ ☆​

• The Scanlation/Typesetting Process
• Software and Settings
  • Photoshop
  • Typesetterer
  • Font Managers
• Font Resources
• Typesetting
  • 01: Create a Typesetting Folder
  • 02: Use the Raws as Reference
  • 03: Input Text
    • Click-and-type vs Text Box
  • 04: Basic Bubble Shaping
    • Tall, Round, and with Padding
    • Hyphenation
  • 05: Basic Font Manipulation
    • Pick a Baseline Font Size
    • Using the Character Panel
  • 06: Advanced Bubble Shaping
    • Joint bubbles
    • Border bubbles
    • Annoyingly thin vertical bubbles
  • 07: Advanced Font Manipulation and SFXs
    • Changing font sizes
    • Tracking, Kerning
    • Baseline Shift
    • Horizontal Scaling
    • Warping Text
    • Using the Pen Tool
    • Using Layer Styles
  • 08: Layouting and Leading the Reader's Eye
    • Leading Lines
    • Sparkly Bubbly Things

 

[phanzanu]

☆ ★ Software and Settings ★ ☆​

Adobe Photoshop​

This guide will only feature Adobe Photoshop, which is what I use for typesetting. Adobe Photoshop CC will be the version appearing in most of the screenshots. If you use something else, this guide is not for you. If you use MS Paint, only God can show you the way, my child.

Spoiler: Read more

Layout

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This is my Scanlation workspace. If you use Photoshop for other things like painting or graphic design, I suggest to create a new workspace (1) specifically for scanlation/typesetting, so you can save the panels you use most often right there in their usual place. The panels I use most often are Character/Paragraph (2), Layers (3), History/Actions (4), and Tool Presets (5).

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These are the Character are Paragraph panels. Those labeled in red are the basics you need to know when typesetting.

* Always set anti-alias to Smooth.
* Always start off with the alignment Centered.

The other settings don't need to be touched until you're comfortable handling the basics.


Settings

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Go to Edit > Preferences > Units and Rulers.

* Set Type to Pixels.


Shortcuts

Here's a pretty nifty PDF for Photoshop CC keyboard shortcuts. Other shortcuts you can edit yourself by pressing ctrl+alt+shift+K. You can also set keyboard shortcuts to your Actions when you create one or by double-clicking the action itself.

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[phanzanu]

Typesetterer​

Introduced to me by Abby, this software saved my scanlation life. It's seriously. That. Good. Here's a quote from its website:

Typesetterer is a program that's intended to make typesetting large amounts of text in Photoshop easier. It replaces the frustrating[make textbox, alt+tab, select text, copy, alt+tab, paste] method with simple, easy-to-use hotkeys. Just load up your script, choose the PSDs, and get typesetting with hotkeys for entering text, navigating pages, changing text size, and even changing the style of text entirely.

Get Typesetterer from its website here. Make sure you read through the page Using It to know how to, well, use it.

Though, Here's the Basics on How to Load Your Script

Spoiler: Read more

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You can either copy-paste into the region above or load the script from a .txt file. Then click on Parse.

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Once parsed, you're giving settings to edit the text with on the right side of the window. When you're done there, click Onward.

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Link your pages together. Scroll through the PSD/page matches to make sure everything's matched correctly. Then click Launch.

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This will launch your default Photoshop software and a Typesetterer overlay that mimics the Photoshop GUI. Remember that your focus should be on the Photoshop window, not the Typesetterer overlay, to make it work. Make it a habit to click the button at the lower-left corner before starting (this saves and closes the current page before it opens another).

Typesetterer has two panels: Text and Styles. F1-F4 help you navigate through the Text panel while F5 and some other shortcuts are for the Styles panel. Read here for more info as well as how to use the shortcuts. I will only include how to use the Text panel in this tutorial.

 

[phanzanu]

Font Managers​

This is not a requirement, but I prefer using a font manager to organize my font collection. This makes it easier to search for font styles (like handwritten or spooky fonts) as well as helps lessen the software startup load on your system by having too many installed fonts.

NexusFont

The one I used to use is NexusFont, a free font manager for Windows. You can get it from its website here. It allows me to sort my fonts as well as to temporarily install them whenever I need them. Take some time (an hour or more) to sort through your fonts and play around with the software and see if it's something that works for you.

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It's up to you how you use your font manager. Just remember that for NexusFont, only the fonts in the Folder or Collection you click on will be temporarily installed for use.

FontBase

FontBase is a new, free font manager available for both Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's goddamn gorgeous, loads very quickly, easy to use, and is actively being updated by the devs. You can get it from its website here. The circles beside the collection (folder) and font family name are switches to activate/install fonts to your system. White circle outline for inactivated, green circle outline for partially activated (i.e. only some fonts in the collection are activated), and green filled circle is for when all the fonts in a collection are activated.

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FontBase is my new favorite because of how sleek the UI is and how quickly it loads your folders. It can even load Dropbox-synced folders. My only problem with it is that it doesn't have the functions (yet?) for directly managing the font files in your system, which Nexus can do. For example, it can't copy an actual font file from D:\Fonts to D:\Dropbox\Fonts even if both folders are included in FontBase.

 

[phanzanu]

☆ ★ Font Resources ★ ☆
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The internet is a big place and has lots of fonts swimming around, both for commercial and personal use. Here's a few sites where I get my fonts from:

• Blambot
• DaFont
• Behance
• FreeDesignResources

 

[phanzanu]

☆ ★ Typesetting ★ ☆


01: Create a Typesetting Folder


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This is for organizational purposes and help yourself and your QCer navigate the sea of layers. You might want to set it as an action with a shortcut so it'll be easy to do before you start on every page.

02: Use the Raws as Reference​

Gozen Oji​

A good cleaner will give you a layer or group that you can hide/unhide to easily take a look at the base raw page. You'll need to do that for the following:

Looking at text placement

The script won't tell you where the texts are, just a general idea of what kind of text they are. You'll need to check with the raw to know that, for panel 4 above, there's an SFX on top of his head and a side-text by the arrow, left side.

Looking at font style

It'll also give you a guide on how to style the text. General rule of thumb is to stick as close as possible to the original style of the mangaka.

Gozen Oji


Gozen Oji


Anagura Amelie
typeset by Abby


Anagura Amelie
typeset by Abby​

Looking at font size

Original manga typesetting usually maintains a baseline font size. Some series however, like Amelie above, have very stylistic typesetting from the get-go. You'll see lots of font size changes that help emphasize or de-emphasize text.

 

[phanzanu]

03: Input Text​

Click-and-type vs Text Box

There are two ways to input text in Photoshop using the Type tool (T). On regular shaped bubbles, I like to use the text box. In a bubble, I like to (1) start making my box from the top left corner and dragging it down to the bottom right. (2) Paste in your text.

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(3) Don't forget to fix the shape of the text to make a rounded more-vertical shape that fits the bubble. "Save" your text box/exit editing mode by pressing Ctrl+Enter. After that, (4) do some manual adjustments to move the box up, down, left, or right with the Move tool (V). You can do this by using your mouse to click-and-drag or by using the arrow keys in the keyboard. Remember that moving won't work using the Text tool unless you press Ctrl to temporarily switch to the Move tool.

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The box method is quick and easy, and it only needs some manual adjustments to make it look good. However, it's not that flexible when it comes to shaping the text itself. There are special bubble shapes that need more flexibility when inputting your text like the one below, and we'll have to do a complete manual input for that.

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If you do the box method here, it'll look too cluttered on the right side where the border of the other panel pokes in. If you move the text a bit more to the left, the bubble looks unbalanced.

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What you can do is manually adjust the text and add lots of spaces to nudge the text around to make it look like this:

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[phanzanu]

04: Basic Bubble Shaping​

Tall, Round, and with Padding

Manga bubbles are different from western graphic novel bubbles. In the western style, the bubble is wrapped tightly around the text.

The Wicked + The Divine​

For manga, there's a lot of empty white space between the text and the bubble.

Tenshi no Tamago​

It probably has something to do with when the bubbles are made (before/after penciling/inking/scanning), but I don't have any knowledge on that so let's skip it.

For manga scanlation, what you're aiming for is a tall, round block of text that fits the bubble shape with a good margin. Compare the two images below.

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Please avoid doing the above. The text is too big and crowds the bubble, making it hard to read.

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This is more aesthetically pleasing because (1) there's a good margin between the text and the bubble outline, (2) the rounded text shape complements the bubble shape, and (3) it looks more like the original spacing we find in the raw.

Hyphenation

Other typesetters avoid hyphenation like a plague. "Never hyphenate unless absolutely necessary." By hyphenation, I mean this:

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Which is something you can do to reduce the amount of empty, white spaces in this:

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That said, typesetters avoid hyphenation because it makes it harder to read the text. This goes against the typesetter's job of making the text aesthetically pleasing and easy to read. Therefore, always ask yourself after hyphenating: can I easily read what I just made? If it made you pause or read it again, it might not be a good idea to hyphenate that word.

Here are some criteria I follow when I hyphenate:

• It's originally made up of two words: Ipponyari-san, Haruki-chan, fly-swatter, war-mongering, type-setting, lamp-post.
• It can be easily read even when it's split up: Yama-guchi, Ma-myuuda (between two kanji, I infer this from the kanji/furigana in the raw), baka-neko, you-kai, apart-ment, com-plex, cabi-net.

Try not to hyphenate words with only one syllable.


Okay, so what if hyphenation is the only way to go (ex., with very thin vertical bubbles)? Then, try to hyphenate in one or both of the areas below.

• Between two consonants: kind-ly, bat-tery, mis-sion, ex-cite-ment, ir-respon-sible.
• Between a root word and a prefix or suffix: work-ed, teach-er, tax-able.

Hyphenation24 is a pretty nifty website that helps determine where to hyphenate English words. When in doubt, check it out.

 

[phanzanu]

05: Basic Font Manipulation​

Pick a Baseline Font Size

What you'd want to do next is take note of the font size you used to make those good-looking bubbles above. Say, it's Zud Juice 18/auto (font size 18/leading auto). What I do is start with that as a baseline font size/settings and use that for all my bubbles of the same type (say, speech).

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Then I make a tool preset that I can use whenever I make a new speech bubble.

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From that, I just increase or decrease the font size and add other effects as necessary. Picking a baseline font size is important to me because of two things: aesthetics and volume.

Pages that have font sizes that differ too much from each other tend to look messy (ex: 18 to 24 to 16 to 18 again in succeeding bubbles). When I need to adjust a bubble's font size to make sure it fits in the bubble, I try to adjust up to 2-3 px to make sure the change isn't too drastic.

As for volume, different font sizes can imply that a character is speaking louder (bigger font size) or is whispering/speaking softly (smaller font size).

Note from Phanpy: I use Character Styles and Paragraph Styles now. Really nifty! Send me a message on Discord for more info cause I'm too dead to update here. D:

Using the Character Panel

Highlighted below are the ones you'll be using to change the style of the font (regular, italic, bold). The ones at the bottom portion are faux bold and faux italic. Some fonts don't have an included italic and bold version, but Photoshop can still apply a "fake" italic and bold version of the font. Try and experiment because a real bold and a faux bold won't always look the same, and one or the other will look better for different fonts and bubbles.

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Leading

Next is leading, highlighted below. Some fonts look good with auto leading, while some need manual readjustment.

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Now, let's see what happens if we tweak the leading a bit. At 13/13, the text looks too tight.

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At 13/18, the leading is way too big. Nope, nope, nope.

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Take note of two sweet spots when it comes to leading: it's either auto or the same as the font size (ex: 18/18). If the font you're using makes you tweak the leading too much to make it look good, find another font.

 

[phanzanu]

06: Advanced Bubble Shaping​

Bubble shaping is, basically, all about placing your text at the very center of the bubble it belongs to, be it narration or speech. However, there are a bunch of bubble outlines that make it hard to do just that. We're tackling some of that below.

Joint bubbles

Joint bubbles are what we call two bubbles connected together.

Koisuru Nante​

The fact that they're joint mostly doesn't have an effect on your typesetting - just place the text in the center of their respective bubbles. However, there are some cases where it can be difficult to place the text correctly. Joint bubbles like the ones below that are too close together tend to have problems with readability.

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What I do is I make sure the baselines of the two texts do not intersect. If the two texts are on the same baseline, the readers' eyes can inadvertently flick over to and get distracted by the words on the other text bubble. If they're on different lines, it's harder for the eyes to get easily distracted.

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If you can, try making a layout where bubble 1 starts out higher than bubble 2. That helps make it more natural for the reader to follow the Japanese right-to-left writing system.

Hana o Meshimase​

For joint bubbles, I like to keep the font sizes as close to the other as possible. If it's not possible, like in the case above where one of the bubbles has way more words than the other one, try not to make the difference in font size too big. While having different font sizes per bubble can make the page look organic and alive, it can also look very messy and cluttered. Different font sizes in the same conversation can make it look like the speaker doesn't speak evenly. Keep in mind as well that a dramatically smaller font size can express that the speaker's voice has become quieter or that the speaker is whispering. Likewise, a dramatically larger font size can express that the speaker is shouting.

An exception to this is when the manga itself originally had different font sizes for effect/emphasis. See below for examples.

Boku to Kimi no Taisetsu na Hanashi​

 

[phanzanu]

Border bubbles

Border bubbles can be nasty in that they sometimes do not leave enough room for your bubble to maintain a good rounded shape with centered alignment. The joint/border bubble below is something I found while reading some manga last week.

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This is a sad example of how to do joint/border bubbles in that both texts aren't centered in their respective bubbles. Note as well that the text in bubble 2 is almost halfway inside bubble 1. I tried fixing it into something I think looks better.

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First, I manually put the text inside bubble 2 (as in I did not use the text box). This is important for border bubbles because we'll do a bit of manual tweaking with the alignment using spaces. (Note that spaces at the end of a line don't show up in text boxes while spaces at the beginning of a line do. I just made it a habit to type manually whenever I feel like I might manually adjust the spaces in my text.)

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Note at the red arrows that there are a couple of spaces typed in in front of the lines. This will nudge them a bit to the right of the original centered alignment. This ensures that they won't be sticking too close to the left border.

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The above is what it would look like without the spaces. Note how the DOING is already touching the border. This is something that should never happen in regular speech/narration bubbles.

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A tweak that we can do as well to make an aesthetically pleasing shape without letting the text touch the border is to adjust the tracking (highlighted VA above) and/or the horizontal scaling (highlighted T above) of the line that's too wide. Adjusting the tracking will make the spaces between the characters narrower or wider. Adjusting the horizontal scaling will stretch or squish the whole line itself, including the characters. A good guide is to try not to go below 95% or above 105% in horizontal scaling. A bigger change looks unnatural and brings about unnecessary emphases in the text.

Lastly, type in the text for bubble 1 (the easier bubble). If you'll notice, bubble 1's text is shaped like an hourglass instead of something roundish. This is to complement the shape of bubble 2 (the harder text bubble). I had to make do with a DOING YOUR line poking out in the middle, so I made sure there would be enough space in bubble 1 to make up for it. That's why the narrow line A CRAZY is also in the middle.

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Annoyingly thin vertical bubbles

There are several ways to approach annoyingly thin vertical bubbles.

One way is to decrease the font size to make the words fit in the bubble. This isn't always ideal when the font size becomes too small that it's barely readable.

Another way is to just type the text vertically. It's not the best method because top-to-bottom text is hard to read in English, but if all else fails, this is your last resort.

My favorite method is to let the text go past the bubble borders and add a stroke.

Boku to Kimi no Taisetsu na Hanashi​

Why not just hyphenate everything? Hyphenating too much isn't advisable because it makes the text hard to read due to the cuts that interrupt the flow of the words.

Note from Avelys: @phanzanu Another method for vertical bubbles (learned by Ayne from Evil Flowers) is by just manually making the box wider. Helps a ton. Should probably ask assistance from a cleaner/editor or quality checker.

Note from Phanzanu: Yup! As long as it's not covering any important artwork, that is also an option! Redrawing bubbles is especially useful in typesetting a messenger convo (take note of the widths of the text bubbles in Amelie below).

Anagura Amelie​

 

[phanzanu]

Advanced Font Manipulation​

Changing Font Sizes

With the text selected, press Ctrl+Shift+Comma(,) to decrease font size by 1 px and Ctrl+Shift+Period(.) to increase font size by 1 px.

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Kerning

Sometimes, two letters in typesetting have too much space or too little space between them. This is usually based on the shape of the letters. In the example below, the second one looks more aesthetically pleasing because of the decreased spacing between 'W' and 'i'.

Source: https://creativepro.com/typetalk-metrics-versus-optical-kerning/​

Kerning adjusts the space between two characters. Photoshop has automatic kerning settings to help you do that: metric and optical. It's best to choose metrics if the font publisher made enough kern pair tables that manually adjusts the kerning between letter pairs. This usually means that metrics is a better choice if the font you're using is from a major type foundry or a reliable font maker.

If your font is from an amateur font creator, chances are it doesn't have a lot of kern pair tables (if it has them at all). That makes it best to choose optical and let Photoshop compute and decide for itself what the best-looking kerning is.

On top of that, it's also possible to adjust the kerning between two characters by putting the cursor between them and pressing Alt+Left/Right. I usually don't do this for regular speech/narration/side-text fonts because of it's impracticality, but manual kerning adjustment is pretty useful for titles/covers and SFXs.

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Tracking

While kerning is adjusting the space between two characters, tracking is adjusting the space in a whole selection (ex: a word, a line, a paragraph). I usually only use this for titles/covers and SFXs.

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Baseline Shift

Adjusting the baseline shift means nudging individual character(s) up or down. Highlight the character(s) you want to nudge and use Alt+Shift+Up/Down to move it.

By combining changes in font sizes, kerning, and baseline shifts, we can come up with an SFX like below. The first one shows the SFX without all the special manipulations, and the second one is the final product.

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Horizontal Scaling

Sometimes, you'll come across a bubble that would look just perfect if that one line could be a little bit thinner. Like the start and end of the line are too close to the bubble borders, but that's the only way to make the whole bubble look good. Fear not! Just highlight the line and adjust the horizontal scaling from 97% to 103%. Any less or more than that, and the adjustment would be more noticable. Horizontal scaling is a better choice compared to tracking adjustment because tracking changes are more noticable.

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Warping Text

Aside from manual manipulations, you can also warp the text instead. Either right click on the layer >> Warp Text or press Ctrl+W to pop out the Warp Text window.

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There are many different styles to choose from. Try and experiment to see which ones look good for which SFX. However, don't go overboard with the sliders and slide them all the way to the left or to the right. Most of the time, it'll just look unnaturally distorted and unreadable.

Using the Pen Tool

Google is your friend.

 

[phanzanu]

Using Layer Styles

Let's start with the stroke. Let's say you have this bubble that has a pattern/screentone in it. To make the text pop out/easier to read, we add a white stroke around the text.

Gozen Oji​

Three ways I know of to access the layer styles are the following:

1. Right click the layer >> Blending Options
2. Double click the empty space around the layer name (not the name itself or you'll just end up renaming the layer)
3. With the layer selected, click on the fx button at the bottom of the layers panel >> Blending Options

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With method #3, you can directly access the Stroke window instead of passing through the Blending Options window. The settings I usually play around with are below. Size for how thick the stroke becomes. Position is where it's located (inside, center, outside). Opacity for how opaque/translucent the stroke will be. Making it <100% will make the stroke look "softer". At 100%, it'll be very harsh/bright. Color is usually either white or black. Experiment with the settings so you'll see what they can do.

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The other layer styles are more commonly used for SFXs than regular narration, speech, or sidetext. Let's take a look at an SFX where we can combine multiple layer styles. The one below has 4 in total.

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First off is the SFX itself surrounded by a black stroke - 2px, center, black.

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Add a thicker stroke underneath it - 4px, outside, white.

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Add a pattern overlay. I won't be covering how to load patterns and where to find them. They're easily searchable on Google. ;) Try to get a pattern set that's specifically "screentones", because they're usually scanned from the screentones that mangaka themselves use.

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And last, but not the least, add a gradient overlay.

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And that's it!

This one is specifically set to a blend mode of overlay to make it blend with the pattern below. Otherwise, it'll look like this at normal:

:(​

Keep in mind to avoid using gradients without overlaying it on a pattern. You rarely ever see smooth gradients in manga. It's almost always a gradient from a screentone, and when it's printed out, you'll almost always see a pattern (especially at high resolution scans).

The same goes for the glow and shadow layer styles. Using it plain is way too smooth and looks fake. Try adding some noise to make it look more natural.

P.S. You can save your most commonly used layer styles as Actions. I have several stroke thicknesses (assigned to the shortcuts Shift+F2 to Shift+F5) as well as several stroke and pattern combinations as actions.

 

[phanzanu]

08: Layouting and Leading the Reader's Eye​

Leading Lines

Ok, so you know how to manipulate your text to make it look exactly how you want it to be. That's great! Now, the question is, where do you put it? Mangaka use a variety of techniques to highlight certain parts of the page and make the reader's eye catch or follow it. One of those is leading lines. Take a look at this page from Hana o Meshimase:

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On the left side is the original group of panels. On the right side is the panels marked with red where you as a reader can follow the leading lines the mangaka set out to make you follow the panels and the story properly. This can be done with both the art and the text. As a typesetter, putting in the text isn't just being able to paste words on the page, it's also about making our readers able to follow the leading lines in the page.

Sometimes though, it's not just being able to faithfully put the text where it originally was. Sometimes, there are differences in the right-to-left Japanese text that can't be directly translated to the left-to-right English text. Sometimes, there are also just better leading lines to follow. :P . Here's another example from Hana o Meshimase:

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Instead of following the original right-to-left layouting in the first panel (top-right), I had to edit it a bit to make it flow easier. If I had followed the original, it would've been easy to skip the second panel and head straight to the third.

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I chose instead to change the layout to make it easier for the eye to follow from panel 1 to panel 2 to panel 3.

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These leading lines are everywhere, I swear. Just keep your eyes open and you'll spot 'em. :)

Sparkly Bubbly Things

Next is those sparkly bubbly things they like to use in shoujo/josei manga. They're usually attached/very close to where the text is. It's there for a reason. Take note of how it's positioned, and then try to replicate that.

Koisuru Nante​

Here's another page from Koisuru where it has both the lines and the bubbly things:

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And that's it!

 

[phanzanu]

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[phanzanu]

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[phanzanu]

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