calibre's PDF output is (not unreasonably) optimized for "regular" books, which generally have images appearing within HTML files. But for comics/manga, I prefer PDFs with literally nothing but the images (so they go fullscreen on the iPad nicely).
Currently I use a semi-manual process to convert my comic-ebooks into PDF, but i'd like to be able to automate it in calibre if possible. Is this possible?
Here's what I currently do:
Overview:
- Get all the book files (including the cover) into one folder
- Make an images-only PDF from that folder
- Add the PDF to the book's entry in calibre
Detailed:
- Convert the book to ZIP in calibre
- Manually unzip the zip file, find the images folder with files 00001.jpg etc.
- Rename the cover file (which is in the parent folder above images) to 00000.jpg
- Drag the cover file into the Images folder. Now I finally have a folder with all of the comic-book pages, and no HTML or CSS files or anything else.
- Use an OS X Automator process I made to brute-force combine all the image files in the Images folder into one big PDF (with the action "New PDF from Images" at its core).
- Drag that PDF onto the book-details page in calibre to add it to the library.
Is there a way to set things up to do this in calibre now? If not, it seems like it would theoretically(?) be pretty straightforward to implement, since it's just throwing all the formatting stuff out the window. I don't know if it could be part of the PDF output plugin or would have to be its own PDF-comics plugin though.
Any ideas?