This opens a dialog where you can create a new comic. For example, you could have a
folder ~/drafts/s00paman_v01 containing the files
01.png, 02.png, 03.png,
04-05.png (which contains two pages in a single image using landscape
layout), 06.png, and 07.png. To create a comic
in ~/comics/s00paman_v01.cbz enter the following values in the
dialog:
Source image folder: ~/drafts/s00paman_v01
Target comic folder: ~/comics/ (The name of the actual comic file,
s00paman_v01.cbz, is automatically computed from the name of the source folder and selected comic file format.)
The options in the right part of the dialog allow to specify how to new comic and the images in it should be handled. For details, refer to the section called “Convert”. Additionally you can specify the following settings:
Open new comic: When enabled, after creating the new comic it will be opened automatically in the viewer.
Create comic for each sub folder: When enabled and the source folder contains images spread over multiple sub folder, a separate comic file will be created for each folder.
Image files naming conventions
On first sight it does not really matter how the image files are called. To ensure that your comic works with as many viewers as possible, they should follow the following guidelines:
Use leading zeros. Name your images
01.pnginstead of just1.png(or even001.pngin case there are more than 99 pages).If you combine two pages in one image using landscape layout, seperate the numbers with a hyphen (-). For example, page 9 and 10 should be
09-10.pnginstead of0910.png. Otherwise many viewers (including Jomic) would consider it to be page 910, and display it after most other pages.Use lower case letters only. For instance, use
hugo_01.pnginstead ofHugo_01.png. That way you avoid possibly improperly sorted images on platforms with case sensitive file systems (such as Linux).Use only character in file and folder names that are know to work on all platforms. Officially, these are: letters A-Z, numbers 0-9, hyphen (-) and underscore (_). One reason again is that these names work on all common file systems. Another is that neither ZIP nor RAR specify which character encoding archives use, so Umlauts, Kanji and other special character can easily get screwed up or result in broken file names.
This opens a dialog where you can select the comic to read.
The dialog also shows a preview image of the currently selected comic (which might take a while to compute when selected the first time) and offers a few options:
Open in full screen - If enabled, after opening a comic the view changes to full screen. For more information on full screen, see .
Adjust file extension - If enabled Jomic will check if the comic file has a proper comic extension (.cbr, .cbz, or .pdf). If not, it will be changed. This applies to too generic and wrong extensions. For a example, a genric .zip file will be changed to a more specific .cbz file, and so will a zipped comic improperly ending in .cbr.
The file will only be renamed if the comic could be opened successfully. In case you accidentally attempt to open a ZIP archive without any images Jomic will show an error and not rename it to .cbz.
It the comic files is located on a read only device (such as a CD) or write protected, the renaming will silently fail and the extension retains.
Once you selected a comic, Jomic extracts all images in it to a temporary directory. Next, it analyses the sizes of the images and uses this information to compute the page layout. Because all this can take a while, a progress bar informs you of the current state of affairs.
You can view only one comic at a time, so opening another comic automatically closes the current one.
In case you attempt to open an archive without any images in it, Jomic scans it for comics. If it can find any, it opens a dialog offering to extract the comics from the archive (to the same directory the archive resides in), and open one of them.
Jomic remembers the last few comics you read. This menu item lets you choose one again. If this item is disabled, it means that you have not read any comics (for example, if you just installed Jomic), or that you cleared it recently. To clear the list of recent comics, use → → .
Single issues of a comic series are often stored in the same directory, with a naming convention indicating the order of release.
For example, the directory
~/Comics/s00paman could contain the comics
s00paman_v1_c001.cbz,
s00paman_v1_c002.cbz,
s00paman_v1_c003.cbz, and
s00paman_v1_c004.cbz. If you are right now viewing
s00paman_v1_c002.cbz, then
→ opens the next issue, which would be
s00paman_v1_c003.cbz.
If this item is disabled, it means that you are already viewing the last comic in this directory.
This item acts similar to
→ , but opens the previous issue. For the example given above, it opens
s00paman_v1_c001.cbz.
If this item is disabled, it means that you are viewing the first comic in this directory.
Close the comic window. This is available only under Mac OS X because closing the window does not quit the application. Instead a framless menu remaims and the application keeps running.
Comics and images can use different formats, which may be useful in one situation but inefficient in another. Among the reasons to convert them to something else are:
You just scanned and cleaned up a comic using lossless PNG images. Now you want to save storage space and convert the images to the lossy but compact JFIF/JPEG fomat, and limit the size to 1200 x 1600 pixels.
You want to read comics on a computer without a comic reader. A PDF reader is installed though.
You accidentally created comics or images in "evil" formats such as CBR and GIF. Now that you realized your mistake, you want to remedy this and convert them to CBZ and PNG.
To convert comics, you first have to specify what you want to convert.
In particular, you can specify:
Comics to convert: Click the "Add" button to, and a file dialog open to let you choose the comics to convert. You can select multiple files and directories. In case you added an item accidentally, just select it in the list and click "Remove". Click "Clear" to start over with an empty list of files.
If you select a whole directory to convert, all files and directories are scheduled for conversion. Furthermore, the directory structure will be preserved in the output directory.
To directory: This specified the target directory where the converted comics should end up. You can either enter it directly in the text field, or click "..." and select it in a directory dialog.
Comic format: Choose "CBZ", which is the standard format for comics but requires a special reader such as Jomic.
Choose PDF, which is short for "Portable document format". Almost all current computers include a reader for PDF documents.
Caution
PDF only supports very few image formats. So when Jomic encounters an unsupported format during the conversion, it automatically converts such images to JFIF/JPEG before adding them to the document. As always with this format keep in mind that it might slightly reduce the image quality and its lossyness makes editing the image later not a good idea. In case of doubt keep the zipped comic around.
Image format: Choose what happens to the images the target comics:
Keep format: the target image has the same format as the image in the source comic. Because no image has to be converted, this will be faster than the other choices.
PNG: This is short for "Portable network graphics" and stand for a powerful and flexible image format that makes sure no information is lost. However, because every pixel is preserved, more space is required than for an image stored in a lossy format such as JFIF/JPEG (see below).
JFIF/JPEG: This is a lossy format that saves quite some space by removing pixels considered less important. This is particular useful if you are sure you are not going to edit the images anymore.
Limit page size to: When enabled, you can enter a maximum width and high in the fields below. If a comic contains an image that is bigger, it will be shrunken to these limits. Note that the size refers to images in portait size. Landscape sized images are automaticall recognized an can have twice the specified width before they are shrunken.
Add only images: When enabled, files in the source comic that are not recognized as images are removed from the target comic. For example, text files.
After clicking "Convert", a new window opens and informs about the progress.
This reveals the current comic in the Finder. This can be useful if after reading the comic, you decided to move or delete it.
If this item is disabled, you did not open a comic yet.
Use this item to export single images to a directory of you choice.
If this item is disabled, it means that you have to open a comic and view a page first.
Caution
In two page mode, this item can be confusing: If the current page consists of two images, only the left one is exported. If you expected the page to be one wide image, exporting will not yield the desired result. To avoid such surprises, switch to viewing single pages by disabling .
Tip
You can actually export broken images. This works because Jomic does not consider the rendered image in the view rather the file it came from. As a matter of fact, this action simply copies a file.
Unlike
, this menu item exports all images of the comic. It
does not preserve the file name of the archive. Instead, files are named according to the
page number the would appear on, for example
01.jpg,
02+03.jpg,
04.png and so on. Again, even broken images are exported.
Preserve names and directories from archives
If you need to preserve the directory structure and file names of the original archive, note that CBZ is a ZIP, and CBR a RAR archive. Thus you can change the file suffix to ZIP or RAR, and extract them using normal archive utilities.