Actually this thread got me thinking about the whole thing more, and I'm now thinking that CBZ is indeed the better format for my situation. "PDF it is" indeed...
That app that I use also now supports CBZ (maybe I should read the update notes more often...) so there's no longer that advantage to PDF, and the un-zip-ability of CBZ is nice. Flexibility is good!
So my new workflow is now:
- Use KindleUnpack to bust open the purchased book
- Navigate to the ~/Desktop/mobi8/OEBPS/Images folder
- Run my newly created Automator action to make a cbz file out of that folder of images (the cover's in there too, yay)
- Drag the cbz back into calibre's book info pane.
This is also nicer because I can just casually cbz-ify the folders of books that I've scanned, even if they're the ones with yellowing pages that I intend to eventually use Photoshop's batch function to color-correct. Since PDF is a final-destination format, up till now I've been correcting my books one by one before adding them to calibre, but with cbz I can always fix 'em later.
So things are going much faster now. Thanks for helping me clear my thoughts about all this — some of these scanned books go back to 2008...
(I've also attached the two OS X Automator workflows below, for CBZ & PDF(*), just in case anyone else has folders of images they need to wrangle. Install them into ~/Library/Services, and when you right-click a single folder they'll be available in the Services sub-menu. Just do one folder at a time and wait for it to finish. A Finder label will be applied to let you know when it's done.)
* Edit: I've repaired the PDF workflow so it should work correctly now. Sorry about dumping all the images onto the Desktop like that!
