Hello. There is a bit of a preliminary explanation first, so if you don’t care about the ‘why’ or the ‘how’, I suggest you simply skip the paragraphs and go straight to the pictures at the end.
Trying to make a long story short, I recently decided to return a bit to a joke project of mine – the fake Magic TCG USB-themed cards, just to see if I could improve it a bit and/or find other ideas for cards, perhaps better organize the posts, those kind of things. (Maybe wulflist will come across this pot.
) And that’s when I got the idea to colorize existing manga scenes and add them. So I searched online for a way to colorize black-and-white pages. I first came across an AI called toona, played a bit with the free version, but as you can expect the free version has many limitations. Still if you want to try, it can be fun – and it’s not time-consuming, you upload the pic, and a few seconds later you have a result – a wonky result, but sometimes actually not that bad. Then I came across a software called style2paints. It’s a bit old, so not as ergonomic, but has more options and is free. Basically, the software does the colorization, but you can use prompts to make sure it selects the colors you want.
I tried first with a couple of pictures from the Sarai manga. There’s absolutely no certitude I’ll ever finish the project, but I thought I’d share the results of my first “preliminary experiments” with you.
Each picture takes roughly 1 to 2 hours – counting first using style2paints for the general colorization, then MS Paint to correct imperfections.
It’s more through luck than skill, but sometimes I’m very pleased with the result. Like this one:
https://zupimages.net/up/24/39/jywb.jpg
Though as you can see, the result can also be very clunky. Apparently, the software has a lot of trouble when there are motion lines. I tried to give it a bit of a stylistic effect, but clearly this isn’t a result I’m very pleased with...
https://zupimages.net/up/24/39/wylr.png
And because you’re all probably hoping for a scene of interest. Not my favorite end result (that would be the first one), but still a way to finally witness this scene in colors…
https://zupimages.net/up/24/39/lqyk.jpg
Maybe I’ll try other snippets at some point. While the process is time-consuming, I won’t deny it’s also very addicting once you begin one...
I hope you liked the pictures. It was fun to try something different, but still USB-related.
), I had to try and fix with Paint, but that was most likely because those were too detailed... Same with the Sarai panels actually. I don't think it's a coincidence the best result I got was with the one in which there were no visual obstacles on the nurses' bodies and hair.