Hi!

My stage name is Yunuyei and in this tutorial I want to give you tips and tricks for printing mangas and doujinshis.

 

Please note that the tutorial is mainly intended for printing typical "black and white" mangas and for color pages a little different settings are recommended.

 

Die Basics

Let's start with the basics.

 

Before you print your first manga / doujinshi, you should first be aware of the format in which you want to print your work.

 

Accordingly, you can create your manga in Clip Studio namely suitable for printing

If you own the EX version, you can choose to use either "Comic", "Print Fanzine" or "Show All Comic Settings".

By default, I choose the Comic option with the following options:

For the pressure are

• size

• cropping

• Resolution

of particular relevance.

 

The size determines the print format of your manga / doujinshi.

 

The trim is a safety edge that guarantees that there are no white edges, also called "speed cameras".

Because, unlike what you might suspect, your pages are not printed on a sheet of appropriate size, but on other pages together on large sheets of paper.

After printing, they are cut to the right size using a laser. Since this does not work 100% accurate, it has a fault tolerance, which corresponds to the "bleed", or "bleed".

It is therefore not advisable to simply draw a white border around the page, as it will be visible in the print if the laser has not worked exactly.

 

Depending on the printing house and country, the trim varies between 2mm-5mm. So it's best to decide where to print before printing.

 

 

Apart from the cropping and the size, the resolution is also important.

 

Color comics should have a resolution of min. 300 to max. 600 dpi.

 

Black and white mangas should have a resolution of min. 600 dpi - max 1200 dpi.

 

I myself use 1200 dpi for my mangas.

Frame / guides

Now that you are familiar with the basics of printing, it will be easier for you to better understand the guides on comic pages.

 

On each manga side there are four frames (colored for the tutorial).

 

The outer blue frame ensures that you can work beyond the trim and no white speed cameras arise. However, this frame can be seen as a pure "working space" and should not be exported, i. he is only a help to you if you work in the program

 

The dark red frame is the crop. If you want to send your manga to the printer, it should be included!

The bright red frame indicates the final size of your manga. Everything that can be seen here will definitely be found in the printed version.

 

However, one should be careful not to place texts and important elements too far on the edge. Especially with larger works, image and text elements in the book binding can disappear and thus be difficult to read.

 

That's why there is still the green frame, which shows you where your texts and important picture elements are "safe".

 

Here are some more examples to better illustrate the principle of the frame / guides.

 

 

This is how a page looks in the program (the frames have been colored):

 

Here you see a manga page including trimming:

The finished manga page, as it will be seen in printed form:

Tip: As you can see on this page, on the right side I have laid out the panels so that they end with the green security zone.

Since the bookbinding on this page is on the right side, a part of the right half will disappear in it and I have planned a bit more margin for it.

 

The same applies if the book binding is left, as with the following page

 

Here, a bit more margin is planned on the left than on the right, because part of the left side disappears in the book binding.

Raster strength

For optimum printing, the thickness / fineness of the grid should be selected accordingly.

Most self-published mangas are printed "digitally". This printing process is very cheap, but not as fine as the "offset printing" used for large print runs.

For digital printing, the "number of screens" should not exceed 80. (Optimal is a grid thickness between 60-80).

Otherwise, it may come to an ugly moiree effect!

 

 

Export manga pages for printing

When your manga is done, you can either export individual pages or all pages at once.

 

As a format I recommend the format .tiff for black and white (manga) pages.

This guarantees a high print quality, despite the small file size.

A 1200 dpi .tiff file only has a size of approx. 1.2-2.4 MB

For the export for printing, you should select the export option "Until the registration mark", so that the cropping is included.

 

For example, if you want to export the page to upload to an online platform, you can choose "to the inside of the markup".

This is the page without trimming.

Next, you should pay attention to the color. Black and white pages should by no means be exported in RGB or CMYK (color modes).

Here we recommend "Duplex (Threshold)" or "Automatically Detect Appropriate Color Depth".

 

Finally, the "grids" should still be set to "quality preferred".

 

 

If you have followed all this, you should now have the perfect files for printing.

book Cover

Clip Studio Paint EX gives you the opportunity to create a book cover along with the manga pages.

 

All you have to do is set the appropriate tick and specify the width of the spine and you'll get a template for the cover.

 

However, many draftsmen at the beginning do not know exactly how strong the spine will actually be in the end. Its size depends on the printer, the type of binding, the number of pages and the thickness of the paper.

Often, just before printing, it is decided how wide the spine is actually at the end.

If the final spine thickness deviates from the planned one, it can be easily adjusted afterwards in Clip Studio Paint.

 

To do this, go to "View" -> "Crop marks / Standard border settings" and change it under "Gap"

 

By the way, you should pay attention to the cover making that books in Japanese reading direction (as in this example), the front cover is left.

 

For books in western reading direction it is on the right.

When your cover is finished, you can easily export it. In contrast to the black-and-white manga pages, however, this should be exported in color mode CMYK.

For color images, a resolution of min. 300 dpi - max. 600 dpi sufficient.

 

Create a PDF

For the printing of books many printers require the data delivery as PDF.

Unfortunately Clip Studio has no PDF function, so you have to use a second program for it.

 

The most popular program for PDF creation is Adobe Indesign.

 

Under File -> New -> Document opens a window where you can define the defaults of his PDFs: number of pages, size and cropping.

 

 

 

The easiest way to import pages is to drag and drop them one at a time into the program with the cursor.

Once you've pulled all the pages into the program, you can export them.

Just go to File -> Export

 

Enclosed you will find my export settings, which have always delivered me an excellent result.

 

 

Before you finally press "Export", you should check that "Use bleed settings of the document" is checked, so that the pages including bleed are exported.

Finally, a hint.

 

In Western reading countries, manga pages in the Japanese reading direction must be placed upside down; in the PDF the last page is the first and the first, the last page.

 

I hope, I could help you with my tutorial and wish you good luck printing your works.

 

If you have any questions or problems you can contact me in German or English.