Noir Style Tutorial, Pt. 13 - Step 8: Cleaning up Renders

Now that I have a collection of three or four images to start with, I'll be moving on to a very quick step: I'm going to run them through Photoshop and do a little clean-up. Specifically, I will:

• Erase excess outlines (depending on the camera's position, there are sometimes "ghost lines" around some of the geometry).
• I run the Threshold Adjustment to get rid of any grayscale artifacts in the image (the process of adding tones in Manga Studio really works best with strong, b&w lines, as opposed to faded grayscale edges).

This detail from her upper-right wing shows the "ghost line" and some grayscale artifacts.

I deleted the ghost line (cut it out, did not cover it with white; that's an important distinction)
and ran the Threshold Adjustment. I'll remove those thin lines in Manga Studio.

Generally speaking, I only spend 3-5 minutes per render pass to do a quick clean-up. I do this in Photoshop because it does a better job of running the Threshold Adjustment than I get in Manga Studio. And, of course, this will work in GiMP or almost any other image processing program.

PRO TIP Combine all your renders in a single, layered PSD file. Then you can quickly trim off any excess lines and fill in any gaps by going layer to layer. You can then open the layered file in Manga Studio and everything will be in place, ready to go.

Now that the renders have been cleaned up, we're ready to move them into Manga Studio so we can combine them and then apply the finishing touches to make it ready for print.

NEXT TIME: Image Clean-Up / Hand-Work / Post Work