The Manga Studio Q&A Thread!

[Jim_Campbell]

I thought we had one of these, but I'm buggered if I can find it. Since we seem to have a rush of new Manga Studio users in the wake of the sale at the weekend, it seemed like a good idea to start a new thread.

Now, I'm no expert on MS, but I have spent a bit of time figuring things out, and if we can get Holden onboard as well, then I reckon we'll be off to a good start.

So... basically, if you have a question about Manga Studio, can't work out how to make to a specific thing -- anything, don't assume it's a stupid question! -- post it here. If you find something cool while you're playing about with the software, post it here. Find a good tutorial or tip? Post a link here.

Here's a few for a start:

Official YouTube tutorials

My blog post shamelessly cribbing from PJ's about using the Panel Ruler/Cutter (you need to scroll down to the second part of that post...)

All of PJ's blog posts that he's tagged "Manga Studio".

Also: follow "Manga Studio for Dummies" author Doug Hills on Twitter -- @DNHills

Cheers!

Jim

[Professor Bear]

What size, colour settings and resolution are standard for working with UK (2000ad), US, or webcomic* pages, and what's the best way to set up those documents and if possible save those settings for future use?
With "new story", is there any way to lay out the files/pages so they're arranged in the western style (left to right) instead of manga style (right to left)?

It was only when I was handing in pages for my first professional work that the difference between CMYK and RGB files came to my attention - and yes, every single page was the wrong colour model - so I'm not taking the piss when I ask about the basics of MS.  I have barely used it and it is mostly baffling.





*I know they're all different sizes, but roughly, I mean.

[Jim_Campbell]

...mostly baffling...

On a horrible deadline today, so this is a drive-by response. More detailed one to follow.

Resolution: 600dpi for plain B&W line art. 300dpi for colour, but see later comment about colour in MS.

You can find D'israeli's 2000AD page template for Manga Studio here along with a description of how to use it.

I'll sort out a US one shortly. If you want to do one yourself, 175mm x 265mm full bleed; 169mm x 259mm trimmed; 155mm x 245mm safe. I use this for Image and they've never complained, so I figure it's OK!

If you change the the "Binding Position" option in the "New Story" dialogue from "Right" to "Left" then you'll get the standard Western page order.

There is no native CMYK support within Manga Studio, which is why I strongly recommend using Photoshop for colouring. You can get a CMYK output by exporting as a TIFF and choosing the CMYK option (you can also specify a colour profile doing this) but you'd need to check the results in something with proper colour management like Photoshop anyway, so you might as well do the colouring there.

D'israeli swears by MS for flatting, however, particularly for having a paint bucket tool which has an option to ignore small gaps in linework. (Also very useful for filling in blacks.)

Cheers!

Jim

[Colin YNWA]

D'israeli swears by MS for flatting, however, particularly for having a paint bucket tool which has an option to ignore small gaps in linework. (Also very useful for filling in blacks.)

Uh I did not know you could do that. I must find that option...

[Jim_Campbell]

Uh I did not know you could do that. I must find that option...

You may need to fiddle with the settings quite frequently, but it's still very useful:



Cheers

Jim

[Colin YNWA]

That's fantastic, thank you very much... now to find time to get back at that wonderful bit of software...

[Dark Jimbo]

I basically bought the programme on the strength of that option! I've got no idea what else it can do as yet. 

[Colin YNWA]

I on the over had have probably spent about 30%* of the oh so limited time I get to use it playing the spot the gap game. It becomes like some kinda child's puzzle book game. Both infuriating and transfixing.





*Yes that is an over-estimation... I hope...

[DoomBot]

PJ Holden posted some excellent stuff about Manga Studio on his blog.

Here's a link to get you started but if you search the blog you can find much more

http://www.pauljholden.com/blog/2009/12/10/manga-studio-vs-photoshop-part-1/


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EDIT
oops just spotted that Jim has already linked to it

[Darren Stephens]

Is anyone planning on upgrading to Manga Studio 5? Excuse my ignorance, but I'm guessing the main difference is regarding the colouring side of things.....?

[Jim_Campbell]

Is anyone planning on upgrading to Manga Studio 5? Excuse my ignorance, but I'm guessing the main difference is regarding the colouring side of things.....?

There's a quick overview of the new features here, while PJ has put together an informative video of the difference v5 will make to flatting here.

PJ seems to think that this will make MS a fully-fledged Photoshop alternative. Some colourists are expressing reservations because MS5 doesn't support channels, but channels are -- as far as I can tell -- a throwback to the pre-Photoshop-3.0 days before layers. I have yet to see a single use case for channels that can't be replicated using layers, so I'm not convinced that this is actually the deal-breaker some think it is.

I'm still suspicious about CMYK colour management, personally, but I'd need to get my hands on it before I could say definitively. Given that I probably won't have time to do anything with it in the immediate future, I'll probably hold off until the EX version is released next summer -- some fairly major features (such as the multi-page 'story' option) aren't included in the current version.

Cheers!

Jim

[Dan Kelly]

Again, PJ has posted quite a lot in the last couple of days on his Twitter stream about MS5

Some good stuff there - hopefully he can condense it somewhere useful!

[Darren Stephens]

Cheers guys. Yeh having only just got 4EX I need to get to know it a bit better before I make the leap. The summer should give me enough time to gather if I can make good use of Manga Studio or not. I see the new version has a more user friendly interface. 4EXs seems very complicated and I'm not exactly new to digiatl drawing. 

[pauljholden]

It's been pointed out to me that ver4 can flat in almost identical way, but it's such a pain to actually select colours with its never something I've explored before.

The one shame about MS5 is the lettering. A throwback, I think to its Asian origins -it just doesn't have the fine grained control over text you'd want. (Though creating speech bubbles is actually fun)

I've been playing with MS5 for about a week and I love it. At this point it's got the exact subset of tools I'd use in photoshop, therefor it's a good solid replacement for PS for me. (And a fraction of its price) whether that'll hold true for everyone is probably dependent on which set of the insanely large feature set of photoshop you use (though if argue that if you can do it in photoshop you can probably do it in ms)

The UI is both more and less comple. - coming from ver 4 it was a right pain, but now I'm used to it it makes more sense and has streamlined many many things (colour picking in ms4 for example was a nightmare and is now both very easy and fun with some of the cool colour mixing palettes)

Hope that helps.

(Btw I was sent a freebie review copy, so take the above evangelising with that in mind! )

[Darren Stephens]

Mmmm that is a shame about the lettering side of things. I'd hoped to start doing a strip for my own fun soon. Are there any other programs that handle lettering better but don't cost an arm n leg?