Making a Comic Book Archive

Overview

Instructions on how to make a comic book archive file for viewing in a comics viewer app like Comic Zeal.

Process

Creating the archive

The thing to remember is that comic book archives are simply .zip, .tar or .rar archives renamed with a different file extension.

• .cb7 → 7z
• .cba → ACE
• .cbr → RAR
• .cbt → TAR
• .cbz → ZIP

• Select a series of PNG or JPEG image files and create a zip archive.
• Rename the archive with a .cbz file extension.

Extracting images from a PDF

• Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader).
• File > Export To > Image > JPEG or PNG

Adding the .cbz file to Comic Zeal app on an iPad

• Connect the iPad to the computer with a USB cable.
• Devices (left column) > iPad > Apps (horizontal menu towards the top) >>> File Sharing >>> Comic Zeal
• Drag the .cbz file into the Comic Zeal Documents box.
• Comic Zeal will import and organize the comic from there.
• Open up the Comic Zeal app on the iPad and the comic will appear in the library menu.

iPad screen sizes

• iPad Pro 12.9 inch: 2732 x 2048 @ 226 ppi
• iPad 3: 1536 x 2048 @ 264 ppi
• iPad 2: 768 x 1024 @ 132 ppi

Collecting pages from an InDesign project

Scenario

An InDesign project adds things like page numbers and headers to a PDF. The desired comic book archive has only artwork.

Workflow

InDesign

• Open the Links pane in InDesign.
• Select all the pages to export
• From the Links pane options menu > Utilities > Copy Link(s) To...
• This will create copies of all the source files in the document.

Photoshop

• Create a batch that will convert the PSD files to PNG or JPEG.
• Use these files to create the archive.

Notes

• [Wikipedia: Comic Book Archive article]