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Xexis

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 22, 2008
43
0
Everett, WA
I wanted to scan my comic and Manga collection to my Mac then find an app I can make them into a book form chapters etc, I see all these apps that let you read them as you buy them but I like owning a physical copy so that I know I own it. HandBrake is wonderful for my DVDs and iTunes for my Music discs but I want to transfer my favorite books and graphic novels so I can just store them to save some space around here. Anyone know of one that I can do that with?
 
There's no app for it specifically, but all you need to do is scan the images from your comic using a scanner app (many to choose from there, and one should be bundled with your Scanner itself), make sure they're jpeg and at a high resolution. About 150 to 300 dpi is best, then make sure they're labeled in page order (I.e. Page one is "1.jpeg") and then compress them with a .zip utility. This can be easily accomplished on the mac by selecting all the pics, right clicking on the selection, then selecting "compress # files". You'll be leftover with a file called "Archive.zip". Simply rename the first part to the comic's name and issue number, and then change the file type suffix to ".cbz". The computer'll ask you if you're sure about the rename, click yes. Now you have a comic book file that works with about 99.9% of comic reader programs out there.

From here I'd recommend getting a comic database app like "ComicBookLover". Think iTunes for your comic files: it saves covers, meta data, genres, sorts into series, etc. From there you can either read them on your desktop, or port them over to a mobile device such as iPad or iPod touch/iPhone and read them on the numerous comic viewers in the AppStore. I reccomend ComicZeal, as it has the most features, but there are other free alternatives like CloudReader.

Hope that helps.

~JYH
 
Thank you very much for the response! I got my first Mac about a month ago and I'm still getting used to how things work but compared to Windows this really blows it out of the water. Not many native programs but nice Open source alternatives.
 
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