A short guide on how to put manga or other comics on the reader if you are using a Mac. Only free software is used.
1. Get the files as jpeg, gifs, png or any format OSX handles natively
2. Open Automator application (comes with 10.4)
3. Add Finder -> Ask for Finder Items to the workflow
4. Add Preview -> Pad Images to the workflow (Automator will ask if you want to add a copy file stage to prevent destroying the original files; add this if you wish); Canvas dimensions should be 600 x 768, and scale image should be checked
5. Run workflow
6. Download PDFLab at
http://www.iconus.ch/fabien/pdflab/
7. Set Preferences -> Paper Size to Fit paper size to included documents
8. Add pictures to PDFLab, and run
Done; you now have a pdf without borders with your comics. Notes:
- The longer the pdf, the longer it takes to open it, so don't create 1000-page documents. I prefer appr. 100 pages / book.
- Sometimes Pad Images step doesn't seem to work for large png files. In those cases, add an Automator step 3.5 which consists of Preview -> Change Type of Images, and change them into jpgs.
- Since all pdfs are displayed on the reader with a small white border, you actually get a slightly better picture if you only do 1-5 and simply upload the resulting image files to the reader, but it also makes navigation worse since you end up with hundreds of image files on the reader
- If you upload image files directly and need to rename them to make alphabetical order = reading order, I can recommend R-Name.app, found at
http://www.tulip.sannet.ne.jp/tayo/
- For an even smoother workflow, delete step 1 and Save As Plugin... and choose Finder plugin; you can now simply select the image files, right-click, and select Automator -> (your workflow). I have 2 of these; 1 which transforms to jpeg to handle problematical png files, and one which doesn't include that step.
- The reason I'm scaling the images to native reader size is mostly because I noticed that the reader's downscaling is pretty bad. If your original is significantly larger than 600x768 it looks much better if you downscale using the workflow than if you let the reader do it. Upscaling on the reader works better, so if your originals are smaller than 600x768 you can skip running the workflow.
Enjoy!
