Development of High-Speed, High-Precision Screen Tone Removal Technology 'eComicScreen ReM'

Kyodo Printing Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; President: Teruomi Ohashi; hereinafter 'the Company') has developed 'eComicScreen ReM,' a technology that automatically removes only screen tones*1 by utilizing image processing technology. By removing screen tones without damaging the artist's line art, this technology contributes to the colorization of past masterpieces for the rapidly expanding digital comic market.

*1 Screen tone: Patterns used in monochrome manga and illustrations to represent shading, shadows, textures, and designs.

Conventionally, when coloring printed monochrome manga plate-making data, it was necessary to manually remove screen tones to isolate the line art, which posed challenges in terms of time and cost. Leveraging AI technology cultivated through the eComic series of image processing systems, the Company has developed 'eComicScreen ReM' to remove screen tones from images with high precision.

'eComicScreen ReM' uses a proprietary AI model to instantly distinguish between line art and screen tones, removing the tones with high precision without damaging the artist's delicate line work. Furthermore, it can complete processing in just a few seconds for images that previously took several hours per page. It also supports batch conversion for entire volumes of comic data, significantly reducing the time required for tone removal and allowing more time for creative tasks such as coloring.

Moving forward, the Company will continue to promote the adoption of the eComic series, including eComicScreen ReM, to publishers and other clients, contributing to the increased efficiency of digital manga production.