Found <<fav.me/d50xf2q|this>>, does it help?

Edit: once I tried <<i.imgur.com/nF7s0jC.jpg|manipping some drool on a photo>>, it's kinda hard until you realise it's just making bright lines and dark lines on top of the image. I think it might be similar with drawings.

Interesting, I figured the process might be something like that. The tutorial is a bit helpful but I think a step by step process done by a manipper will be of more benefit.

It's been a while for this thread, but here I have two jumpstart guides I made for getting started in image manipulation. This is for anyone who wants to try their hand at manipping but is a bit daunted by the learning curve. For starters, I have two guides, and I'll update with more.


Getting Started in GIMP

Hello there! This is your friendly neighborhood fluffball speaking! I'm here today to show you how to manipulate images with simple tips and tricks. For starters, I'll walk you through the basics of image editing software to help you understand their functionality. In the next guides, we'll do a demonstration together with several different techniques!
Let's first define an image manipulation. A manip, as it's usually referred to, is an pre-made image that has been visually modified in some way. On the HypnoHub, you can find many of these image manips where either pocketwatches and spirals have been added, or even the physical traits of the subject in the image are modified to depict a trance!

THE SOFTWARE
The most important tool for manipping is the image editing software. This is the program you will use to modify and manipulate the image to your liking. Examples of image editing software include simple programs, such as Microsoft Paint, and more professional and feature-filled suites, like Adobe Photoshop. For this guide, I will be using a program called "GIMP" (The GNU Image Manipulation Program). GIMP is often considered to be on or near the level of flexibility and use as Adobe Photoshop. As an added bonus, it's free! You can download it from www.gimp.org! Another free alternative that is commonly used is "Paint.NET", which is some consider more similar to Photoshop than GIMP is.

THE BASICS
After installation, opening GIMP will open <<i.imgur.com/ftdKuLT.png|three windows:>> a main window, a toolbox, and a layers window. If either of the latter two don't open, you can always open them from the "Windows" button in the main window toolbar.

To open a new file, go to "File" then "New". You will be greeted with a new window like <i.imgur.com/VNeOe2Z.png|this one>>. If you have an image in mind to use already, enter its size here (it's ok if you don't know, I usually recommend setting it to 2000x2000 and then cropping it down to size if need be). Then, click "Advanced Options" and enter the resolution you want. I typically work with a resolution of 150 ppi. Set the the "Fill with" box to "Transparency", this is important! Starting with pre-filled layers is annoying and often cumbersome when we start adding more layers. Once you're good, hit "OK".

Note: Why are we creating a new image when we already have an image in mind? Shouldn't we just open it instead?

Excellent question! The reason we use new images is that it allows us to make all layers transparent and raise the resolution. It's much easier to work with and will give a better quality manip in the end.

Once you've started your new image, you will see that the main window now has a <<i.imgur.com/xBEG4Td.png|checkerboard pattern.>> This is your canvas, the space in which you will manipulate the image. The checkerboard pattern is how the program denotes transparency; it won't appear in the final image. You'll also see that a new layer, titled "Background", has appeared in the Layers window, as well as an eyeball symbol. Don't worry about that for now. Let's add our image!

Make sure you have the highest resolution of the image you want to manip, then copy and paste it into the main window. I usually copy the image directly from the source site, but you can also open it in MS Paint or similar and copy from there.

After you've <<i.imgur.com/ix2p4Se.png|pasted the image,>> it will appear in place of the checkerboard pattern along with what looks like ants marching around the border in a moving dotted line. This moving border denotes a "selection", meaning anything you do to the image will only affect whatever is within the moving lines. In the Layers window, you will notice that there is now a new layer above the Background layer. This layer is the Floating Selection and only appears when something is pasted into the main window. By clicking either the "Rectangle Select" or "Ellipse Select" tools from the Toolbox window (the two tool icons in the top right) and then clicking outside of the selection border, the pasted layer will automatically merge down to the next layer below it. Be careful when pasting over multiple layers. Make sure you merge your selection down to the layer you want!

The pasted layer should now be merged down to the Background layer. You can change the name of your layer by double-clicking over its name. I renamed mine <<i.imgur.com/cYvfwdp.png|"Base".>> If you click the eyeball icon to the left, you will notice that the checkerboard returns as your image vanishes! Clicking again will bring your image back. This will be incredibly useful in the future. You can also make an image semi-transparent by clicking and dragging the icon along the Opacity bar at the top of the Layers window. Don't worry about "Mode" for now. Different modes for layers can lead to interesting effects, but in most cases, Normal Mode will suffice.

Click on the <<i.imgur.com/GQPGbRI.png|"Duplicate" icon>> (which looks like two layered squares) and the highlighted layer will be duplicated. You can also do this by right-clicking on the layer and selecting "Duplicate Layer". I do this for every image, regardless of how complex it might be. I renamed the copy layer as "Primary". It may help to turn the Base layer invisible by clicking the eyeball icon. This will be the backup layer for the original image as you manip the primary layer.

So, have I lost you yet? I hope not! For now, let's just do a quick runthrough of the various tools.

THE TOOLS
For starters, take a look at the Toolbox window. You'll notice there are 34 icons on the top, with two colored boxes underneath. These icons are the various tools you can use to change your image. The colored boxes are the current colors that certain tools will use. The top color is your "primary color", while the bottom color is your "secondary color". <<i.imgur.com/31QQcmA.png|I've gone ahead and (poorly) numbered each tool in the window.>> Let's see what each one does, shall we? I recommend testing out each tool to see how it looks as you read through! Don't worry if you mess up your image. You can always hit "Undo" or just exit without saving!

1. Rectangle Select: Click and drag anywhere on the image to make a rectangular-shaped selection. That familiar "marching ants" line will reappear to denote your selection. Remember, your selection will only affect the layer you currently have highlighted! If you move to another layer after making your selection, then your selection will only affect that layer. It moves with you! If you want to make more than one selection or add to a selection, just hold down down the Shift key as you drag the new selection. If you want to remove area from a selection, hold down the Ctrl key.

2. Ellipse Select: Click and drag anywhere on the image to make a round selection. Pretty much the same as the Rectangle Select, but with a circular shape.

3. Free Select: Click at various points around the image to make your selection. You can close the selection by clicking again on the first point you clicked. You will notice little bubbles showing up whereever you click to denote where the selection goes. Don't worry if you make a mistake midway through, you can always move the bubbles around before you close the selection! You can also freehand the selection by holding down the left mouse button and drawing the shape with your cursor. This is very useful for selections that are more complex than simple circles and rectangles.

4. Fuzzy Select: Click on a region of the image and it will automatically select anything in the region that is a similar color. You can change how broad of a color difference you'll allow with the Threshold bar under "Tool Options" beneath the list of tool icons. Use this one with caution; it's usually not a very form-fitting selection, as there always tends to be a slight fuzzy gradient at line borders. When in doubt, use Free Select instead.

5. Select By Color: The same as Fuzzy Select, but it will select all regions in the entire image that are of similar color, rather than anything connected to where you clicked.

6. Scissor Select: Like Free Select, it will automatically snap the line to fit and color boundaries. It suffers from similar problems to Fuzzy Select and isn't very useful for images with lots of colors. Yet again, Free Select is probably the better option.

7. Foreground Select: Makes selections based on image foreground and background. It's a bit tricky and not all that relevant to the usual changes we make, so we won't be using it in these guides.

8. Paths: Not only a great tool for doing your own lineart, there are many things that the Paths tool can be used for. You can draw a path much like the Free Select tool, however you can change the curvature of each line by dragging in a direction with each click. You can also change the curvature afterwards. The most common uses (found in the tool options) include drawing a line along the path or making a selection along the path. This is a good tool for simple redrawing for more complex manips.

9. Color Picker: Changes the primary color in the Tools window based on where you click on an image. If you're not on the right layer, you might get the wrong color! If you want to change the secondary color, just hold Ctrl when you click.

10. Zoom: It zooms in when you click and zooms out when you hold Ctrl and click. You can also drag to select an area in particular to zoom in on.

11. Measure: By clicking and holding the left-mouse button, you can measure distances and angles in your image in terms of pixels and degrees. The results will show up in realtime along the bottom of the main window. Likely won't see much use but can be useful in drawing.

12. Move: You can move around selections and the like with this tool. Be careful when working with full layers, though. It can get a little messy and accidentally move your whole layer out of the workspace!

13. Alignment: A tool for aligning objects together. We won't be using it in these guides.

14. Crop: If you want to cut away an entire area of the image, you can drag and select a region and hit Enter to crop the image down to that region. This is useful if you don't know the size of the image you're starting with and oversize your canvas when making a new image.

15: Rotate: Clicking on a selection will bring up a new window. You can adjust the angle and rotate the image either by entering a new angle or clicking and dragging the selection.

16. Scale: Clicking on a selection will bring up a new window. You can change the size of the selected region. Clicking on the open chain icon next to the numbers will allow you to keep the size ratio of the selection constant no matter how you scale it.

17. Shear: This is a bit of an awkward tool. It's like Rotate and Scale, but it twists and skews your image. We won't be using it in these guides.

18. Perspective: Combines Scale and Shear in a way to scale the image corner by corner. Doing so can allow you to imitate different perspectives. This can be useful for changing the angle of some objects we manip.

19. Flip: Automatically flips the selected region horizontally. You can change this to vertical in the tool options.

20. Cage Transform: Similar to Perspective, you can change a selection with some interesting angles. However, it's a bit more complex than Perspective, which is adequate enough for most tasks. We won't be using it in these guides.

21. Text: Click and drag to create a transparent text box over the image. This will create a new layer over the highlighted one.

22. Bucket Fill: Replaces all of a certain color in a continuous region with the primary color. Like the Fuzzy Select, it has too many weaknesses and is usually skipped over for the regular Brush tool.

23. Gradient: Creates a gradient of the primary color and secondary color over a selected region. The tool options for this one are plentiful and there are many different gradient shapes and pre-made colors to work with.

24. Pencil: Creates a hard line of the primary color when clicked and dragged. Useful for some basic redrawing, but not very versatile.

25. Brush: Like the Pencil, but with many more tool options and capabilities. You might find yourself using this one a lot for even little manips.

26. Eraser: Like the Pencil and Brush, but it removes from the image rather than adding. If new layers in the image are not initially transparent (as chosen when you make a new image or layer), the eraser tool will only reveal the base color for that layer, not the layers underneath. This is why we chose "Fill with: Transparency" when we made our new image.

27. Airbrush: The same as the Brush, although it starts out as fairly transparent and each pass over the same place will cause the color to grow more opaque. Can lead to some interesting effects, but the Brush is the more likely tool to use in most cases.

28. Calligraphy: Like the Pencil, except it mimics ancient calligraphic styles. May be useful in a few cases, but likely won't see much use. Props if you can use it well!

29. Clone: Replicate a region by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on an area that wants to be replicated. Now, any region that use use the Clone tool on like the Brush will paint what it passes over in the area you used the Ctrl key. This is a pretty trippy tool but can be very useful. I highly recommend messing around with this one a bit to get a feel for it.

30. Healing: The same as Clone, although it specifically targets little imperfections in the image. The Clone tool is fairly adequate for this job, so it's up to you which you'd rather use. I will be using the Clone tool in these guides.

31. Perspective Clone: Combines the Perspective tool with the Clone tool. It may be useful for some cases, but we won't be using it in these guides.

32. Blur/Sharpen: Either blurs or sharpens a region you brush over. You can switch between the two in the tool options.

33. Smudge: Click and drag to literally smudge the image up. It can be useful for some redrawing, but it likely won't see much use.

34. Dodge/Burn: Darkens or lightens an image based on selections in the tool options. Dodge will lighten where you brush while Burn will darken it. This is very useful for shadow and reflection effects, especially in the eyes. Keep in mind that these effects don't cancel each other out; dodging and then burning the same place won't return it to normal.


Okie dokie, so that was quite a list! That's just a brief overview of what can be done in GIMP, but there are lots of little fun things in the program as well! I recommend taking the time to mess around with the tools on an image just to see how the work. You can also mess with options under the "Filters" button in the main window toolbar as well as the "Colors" button. We will be using these extensively in other guides and can lead to some interesting effects and options.

Next, we'll work on various eye effects in GIMP! See you then!


Hypnotized Eye Effects

All righty, friends! Let's continue onward and work on some eye effects in this guide! The focus of this guide will be to show you how to do several different manips involving the eyes, including:

-Blank Eyes
-Empty Eyes
-Eye Roll
-Spiral Eyes

If you remember from the introduction guide, let's get started by opening up a new image with 150 ppi resolution and a transparent fill. Then, paste in your image and duplicate the layer. I've already done so <<i.imgur.com/7WHSrQu.png|here>> with the image I'll be working on today. Today's image is of <<gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=2291515|Bismarck from Kantai Collection, as drawn by artist Shinekalta.>> I chose it because the eyes are fairly big, the colors are clean, and because Germany.

REMOVING THE EYES
This may sound weird, but we're actually going to remove her eyes first. We can do this with the eraser tool. You can adjust the size of the cursor for your tool with the bracket keys. The right bracket key (]) increases the size while the left bracket key ([) decreases the size. You can change the brush hardness or shape in the tool options by clicking on the icon, but <<i.imgur.com/0Fy1SLr.png|this is the one I chose.>> It's a pretty standard brush with just a little bit of fuzziness at the ends. It gives a more natural look than a totally solid brush.

Begin by highlighting the top layer and <<i.imgur.com/iDPyUuZ.png|removing everything>> within the white of her eyes. If the Base layer is invisible (eyeball icon off), the familiar checkerboard pattern should reappear where you erase. Try to stay as close to the lines as possible without removing them. It may take a few tries to get right at first, so don't be afraid to hit the undo button if you're not sure. If you feel you're not getting the edges enough, you can also click mulitple times in the same place to better remove material. Shrink the brush as needed to get the finer details in the corners. Just keep in mind that a smaller brush has less fuzz and may give a harder line, so use sparingly. Zooming in can also help to better see problem areas. Once the first eye is complete, you can move onto the next one.

And with that, the <<i.imgur.com/rAxvbUJ.png|eyes are removed!>> Now, we will start getting different looks going for her.

BLANK EYES
While not always immediately associated with hypnosis, in some cases you might find they are indicative of mindlessness or brainwashing. It's also really convenient that both the empty eyes and eye roll effects require you to do the blank eyes steps as well!

So now that her Primary layer is eyeless, we need to go back to her Base layer. <<i.imgur.com/Z3tKy6Q.png|Select the Base layer>> and click the eyeball icon and make it visible again. Then take the Color Picker tool (the eyedropper) and click on the brightest part of the whites of her eyes. Hold the Ctrl key and click on the darkest part of the whites of her eyes, usually the shadow just below the lashes. These colors should now show up as the new primary and secondary colors in your Toolbox window.

Now create a new layer in the Layers window by either right clicking and selecting "New Layer" or clicking the New Layer icon. Make sure the layer fill type is set to "transparency and click OK. Then click and drag the new layer down between the Primary and Base layers. Rename the layer to something like <<i.imgur.com/E6PC6D2.png|"Blank Eyes".>>

With the Blank Eyes layer highlighted, use the Brush tool and <<i.imgur.com/9DhqALz.png|paint your primary color>> in the general area of her removed eyes. It's ok if you go outside a bit, as it won't be seen through the Primary layer. If your initial erasing of the eyes wasn't clean enough, you should see some apparent lines and whatnot around the border of the eyes. If needed, highlight the Primary layer and erase a bit more until it looks clean. Next, switch back to the Blank Eyes layer and change swap your primary and secondary colors by clicking the double-headed arrow between them. Choose a brush with just a slight amount of fuzz and set the brush opacity to about 50%. <<i.imgur.com/WEmVWWG.png|In one stroke,>> try to replicate the shadow on the eye similar to the Base layer, or try to make it as natural as possible as an eyelash shadow. Brushing in one swoop will allow for a consistent opacity along the shadow.

And there you have it! There may still be some lines left to clean or boundaries to straighten up. If you feel that the shadow and the white of the eye look like too much of a contrast, go to Filters->Blur->Gaussian Blur. Set it to 4x4 first and see how it looks. You can undo or blur again if need be.

EMPTY EYES
Now that we have the whites of the eyes in place, we can add pupils. While Bismarck's eyes are quite shiny in this picture, we'll have to make her all empty eyed and obedient for now. Rather than paint over her original eyes, we're actually going to make her a brand new pair of irises! It may seem a bit overkill, but it allows for even more variation and movement with the eyes. Plus, it makes painting the eyes much, much easier.

For starters, let's turn the Blank Eyes layer invisible and the Base layer visible. Highlight the Base layer and use the Color Picker to get the eye color. Make your primary color the near-black outline of the eye (it may be black in some images, as it pretty much is here) and make your secondary color a light region of the iris. Now open a new layer, name it "Empty Eyes", and place it between the Primary layer and the Blank Eyes layer. Make sure this layer is highlighted, else you'll be painting on the wrong layer! Use the Ellipse Select tool and draw an oval shape, long vertically, to about the size you would want her iris to be. I usually make them slightly smaller than the original eyes, but it is generally a personal preference. Paint in the oval with the primary color, then <<i.imgur.com/o1KPr7W.png|paint in the secondary color in the center,>> leaving just a line of the primary color around the edge.

Go back to the Base layer and use the Color Picker to select a darker color from the iris. Then highlight the Empty Eyes layer and switch to the Fuzzy Select tool and click on the lighter color of the new iris. Go to the Select button in the main window and select Grow, and choose 2 pixels. Go back to Select again and choose Feather and set it to 5 pixels. Pick a brush with a low hardness (lots of fuzz) and set the opacity low. It's better to work with a low opacity and work up when layering on a gradient like this. Paint the darker color over the top part of the eye, blending it down to create a mild gradient. Leave the bottom more brightly colored! Use the Dodge/Burn tool set to Burn, at 50% opacity, and midtones mode. Paint over the entire new iris a few times. If you want the appearance of a faint pupil left in the iris, paint a small oval a few times again with the darker color. Use the blur tool (only in the colored region, not on the edges!) to blend it together a little more. <<i.imgur.com/jI3OEAI.png|Copy and paste the iris to the other side>> so that she now has two irises. If the border of the new iris is a little light, I recommend growing the selection (Select->Grow) another 2 pixels before copying.

In this image, her head is slightly tilted. Her right iris (our left) looks like it needs a slight rotation. Use a preferred selection method and make a selection around the iris, then <<i.imgur.com/HASfI9u.png|rotate and adjust as needed.>>

<<i.imgur.com/vosMlFC.png|And now she's thoroughly hypnotized!>> It's nice to see her all relaxed and happy like that, but what if she was a bit more...mindless? Let's do some roll some eyes next!

EYE ROLL
Once you have the empty eyes in place, the eye roll effect is very simple. Here, we'll give her an eye roll with a little bit of crossing. This will give her a look of just the right amount of bliss.
Start by making a selection around one of the irises on the Empty Eyes layer. Cut and then paste the iris back in place. This will turn the iris into a floating layer. <<i.imgur.com/xzwD0rN.png|Use the Move tool>> to move the iris up just enough that only the bottom quarter of the iris is still visible from beneath the Primary layer. Moving the iris slightly closer to the nose as well gives a somewhat goofy, crossed eyes look. <<i.imgur.com/FN0hzCX.png|Here is an example>> with slightly more crossing and raising the eyes even higher (with only about an eighth of the iris visible now).

SPIRAL EYES
Last but not least is something a bit different. We won't need the Blank Eyes or Empty Eyes for this one, so we can turn them invisible for now. There are only two major steps to making spirals: add the spiral, then add the shading. The simplest part would be finding a picture of a spiral online and then pasting in, but for this guide I will also show you how to make your own spirals. I'll be showing you my method for doing this one. As with most of manipping, techniques vary by person. Check out Zko's spiral eyes tutorial earlier in this thread for another method you might like.

Make a new layer, name it "Spirals", and make it the top layer for now. Use the Ellipse Select tool to make a large, circular selection slightly larger than one of her eyes (you can see the dimensions of your selection at the bottom of the main window). Pick a base color for your spiral and make it your primary color (you can change it manually by double-clicking on the primary color). Paint your primary color on the circular selection in the Spirals layer. Pick a similar color but with a contrasting brightness (such as light blue on dark blue) and paint in smaller, random lines into the circle. You can mix and match colors and even make a rainbow if you so desire. <<i.imgur.com/T1LPjZn.png|Here, I went with light blue lines on dark blue.>>

Go to Filters->Distort->Whirl and Pinch and play with settings until the preview matches a spiral design you like, then hit OK. If you want to have matching spirals in each eye, simply copy and paste the first one. If you want slightly different patterns or some variety, just repeat the steps over the other eye. <<i.imgur.com/A7jl6fs.png|Finally, swap the Spirals layer to be just below the Primary layer.>>

All that's left is the shading. To do this, use the Dodge/Burn tool set to Burn and blend in a dark shadow beneath the eyelashes. This will give the eyes a little bit of depth and make them look just a bit more natural. Go over the shadow once with shadows, midtones, and highlights modes for the optimal coloring. If the Burn tool doesn't give you a very good shading, a very low opacity brush of black or darker shade of the spiral colors may suffice. You can also set it to Dodge mode and add a few highlights, as I have <<i.imgur.com/iQwY31m.png|here.>>

And that's it! Those are just a few of the things you can do to make hypno-eyes of your choice. I hope you find this information useful, and happy manipping!

As an alternate technique, what I do with eyes is put the eye layer over the original image and then give it a mask/alpha layer so that it's only visible in the eye socket. This lets me preserve the original image completely while painting over it, allowing me to finesse the eye layer border at will and instantly toggle the eye layer on and off to compare with the original eye, which helps with making the new eye fit stylistically with the original work.

If I'm going with a spiral I might just dump it on, or if I'm doing empty_eyes I will usually just paint over the original eye to maximize its similarity to the artist's style; otherwise I will often start with a whitewash eye like in the tutorial above.

My biggest advice for manips are these:
* Use lots and lots of layers. Duplicate a layer and work on the duplicate if there's any chance you might need another copy or try going a different direction if what you do isn't working out. A little clutter in your layers is not nearly as big a problem as you might think, and comes with big advantages.
* Favor masking over erasing. Masking is just like erasing except you can use a paint tool to undo erasing a few of the pixels any time you want, even weeks later. I probably use the eraser tool 1/30th - 1/50th as much as I set up and paint masking layers. This is a big deal with manips because when you zoom out with the finished work you suddenly realize a line looks weird because you took off a little too much of its edge and need to put a tiny bit of black back in.
* Save the editor file forever because being able to open an old file to see what you did (e.g. fonts, layer styles) actually comes in handy more than you might think.

11 months late, but I use photoshop!



I should try that sometime, never used masking before (is that even in photoshop?) Although I delete the .psd file after a few days, so I'm not sure how helpful that will be for me.

MASKING IS ALWAYS VIABLE
also photoshop has everything :u

It is very handy if you dont want to keep making duplicate layers you dont want to ruin or if you dont have many undos

I don't know how modern photoshop looks but on mine it's a white circle in a gray square on one of the buttons lined up near the layers list.

Ah okay, I shall try playing around with that next time I manip xD

As an aspiring manipper, and one who uses Photoshop, I have to admit that making manips is really fun. However, I will admit to one thing that stumps me... Text manips. I know that adding the text and everything is likely the simplest thing in the world, but I'm just.. not sure how to go about it. I'm not sure how much space I should add on to add text, and I'm worried about it looking too... noticeably different to the rest of the image.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks that help?

(warning: links to furry, incest, yaoi, who knows what)

The easiest thing (which I usually do) is to simply <<hypnohub.net/post/show/13111|expand the image to the left or right>> to get some space for text. Something about 500 pixels is usually good. First, make sure there's no locked "Background" layer (at least in PS 6 - yes my software is that old) because it will automatically fill new canvas space with the background color, and you really don't want to mess with the original image's layer like that, as it makes things like changing the background of the new area harder. Then use Edit -> Change canvas size (something like that) and add about 500 pixels, making sure it's expanding from the left or right, not the center. Adjust as desired and put a layer behind the image that's a solid color or gradient appropriate for however you want it to contrast with the text and contrast or blend with the edge of the image. By segregating the text it tricks the brain into not caring that it doesn't really match the rest of the image. If the original image has a [[simple_background]] then you can often <<hypnohub.net/post/show/19956|cheat it out>> to give yourself some more room even when you're following the features of the image.

When putting text over anything that's not a single solid color, using the "stroke" layer style at 2 or 3 px, in a color that contrasts strongly (by luminosity) with your text color, usually white or black, is immensely helpful to the readability of the text. I consider it mandatory if the text needs to be clearly readable (though in this fetish it often doesn't). Often that's not enough because there's too much visual noise behind the text; in that case you can <<hypnohub.net/post/show/12186|mute it with a solid color>> (useful if the image is already too wide to expand but you don't want to crop side features out completely) or block it out completely with a box. If adding any other features like <<hypnohub.net/post/show/19368|speech bubbles>>, borders are much more optional, but can make them pop, and might improve readability if you're packing text close to the edges.

Make sure to worry about:
* Readability (flowery scripts and small font sizes tend to be harder to read, color must contrast with the background)
* Font (I prefer human voices to be in <<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans-serif|sans serif>> because that more resembles handwriting, machine/robot stuff should be in <<hypnohub.net/post/show/10437|angular fonts>>, etc.)
* Spacing (for paragraphs of exposition I often prefer justified-left, while for speech I prefer left-aligned, and on text as sparse as a manip it helps not to have a sentence's first word be all the way over on the right side before a new line)
* Stylistic clarity (Font <<hypnohub.net/post/show/19973/|face>>, <<hypnohub.net/post/show/12861|color>>, and <<hypnohub.net/post/show/20101|size>>, <<hypnohub.net/post/show/20122|blank space>>, <<hypnohub.net/post/show/10357|alignment/positioning>>, and <<hypnohub.net/post/show/20054|stylistic flairs>> can all give clues to the reader about who is speaking when about what in which tone of voice and at what volume)

Finally, this applies to all manips in general, but is definitely true for text: never, ever upload a manip on the same day you did the bulk of the work on it. Your quality will improve massively if you sleep and then look at it again with completely fresh eyes. This is the #1 way to catch typos, sections of text that don't convey what you want as well as you thought it did, and when text is not as easy to read as you thought it was when you had just typed it and basically already had it memorized when you were evaluating its readability.

Pretty much what greasyi said (said it way better than I ever could xD)

One thing I do with readability is to save the image, then open it again in Windows Photo Viewer or something, without using zoom in/out. That's pretty much what I assume the manip will look like when you first upload it. I try to make the text readable in that 'size', since that's how most people will read it.

I use Photoshop, and I did pay for it. Eventually. Never been able to totally get the hang of the GIMP's interface quirks, even after a year of it being my primary image editing program.

And I always forget how to do layer styles, because I so rarely find myself needing them...

Y'know, I think I might make a video this week about the basics of doing a "hard" translation. I know some people learn better from a video than a text guide, so... if I do, I'll be sure to post it here (though the image or images used in it will be clean, I can at least use some with an MC theme to them).

To edit layer style in Photoshop, double-click the layer in the layer list.

this is a repost from a individual thread, sorry to put it in the wrong spot

asking for manip advice

Long story short I've been a bit inactive on the manip side so decided to do one and found this really nice picture with Courtney from pokemon OR/AS. The picture however has some Japanese text in the background and I cant seem to edit it out well enough to make it look good. I've tried putting text boxes over it for what text I was going to add but it doesn't look good ether anyone got any advice here is a link to the source pic. www.aerisdies.com/img.php?a=9034&n=49&f=1#img

Also for whoever saw my post the link was wrong because when I'm logged into aerisdies I have the new ones post on top of the list not on the default bottom so thats why my first link was messed up

Considering no one would care of the blurry smoke was changed (it doesn't need to be preserved to look "right", like anatomy or furniture would), I would just completely redraw it with an airbrush tool. Blitz the whole text with background color and then take a soft 1% pressure white brush and put some smoke back in so it doesn't stand out.