JE-Comics Converter

[Kirys]

we'll see , I'm still waiting for screenshots

[humandroid]

I want to try this but where is the link?

[Kirys]

in the first post

[mlkmnz]

Great software Kirys, youre a champion. Are you planning to add .cbr support anytime in the future?

Originally Posted by Kirys

I've just uploaded v0.7.0 that provides CBZ/Zip support
Let me know how it works

[splat]

Originally Posted by Kirys

we'll see , I'm still waiting for screenshots

Sorry, I totally spaced on that one . Here are a couple of quick shots to keep you going. Lighting isn't great. These are from the manga, Death Note and converted with the default filter settings.

[splat]

Back to the old OS X conversion problem, I have noticed something interesting on the 7.0 release (have not tried it with other versions).

I ran JE-Comics on the first chapter of Death Note again. This Chapter contained 53 files. The first 10 being .jpg, the remaining 43 being PNG.

Taking the default settings on JE-Comics and hitting generate, it processed all 10 jpg with out and issue, but this time also managed to convert the next 9 .png files. Before erroring.

Generating output for: Iliad portrait
Image 'Death Note v01  CoverFront.jpg' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 000a.jpg' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 000b.jpg' processed in:3s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 000c.jpg' processed in:3s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 000d.jpg' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 001.jpg' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 002-003.jpg' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 004.jpg' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 005.jpg' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 006.jpg' processed in:3s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 007.png' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 008.png' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 009.png' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 010.png' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 011.png' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 012.png' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 013.png' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 014.png' processed in:2s
Image 'Death Note v01 c001 015.png' processed in:2s
Exception:java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: LUT has improper length!
Done
Exception:com.lowagie.text.DocumentException: The document has been closed. You can't add any Elements.
Done
Exception:java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: LUT has improper length!
Done
<.....repeats for remaining PNG.....>
Total Processing time:123s
Done

Now not being too up on my coding, would the fact that that JE-Comics was able to convert some of the png images, indicate that this is not necessarily a problem with the OS X version of Java.

This was tested with both J2se 1.4.2 and J2SE 5.0.

I have attached 4 pages from Death Note, on the off chance this can help in troubleshooting:

Death Note v01 c001 014.png
Death Note v01 c001 015.png

Which both converted fine, and then

Death Note v01 c001 016.png
Death Note v01 c001 017.png

Which failed the conversion.

All these files convert fine when on Windows

[Kirys]

Originally Posted by mlkmnz

Great software Kirys, youre a champion. Are you planning to add .cbr support anytime in the future?

Actually there is no short term plan for cbr/rar support, it depends on if someone will start creating an usable rar library for java

Originally Posted by splat

Back to the old OS X conversion problem, I have noticed something interesting on the 7.0 release (have not tried it with other versions).

png decoding is exactly the same since 0.5.0

Originally Posted by splat

Now not being too up on my coding, would the fact that that JE-Comics was able to convert some of the png images, indicate that this is not necessarily a problem with the OS X version of Java.
[..]
Which failed the conversion.

All these files convert fine when on Windows

Till now the only infos I was uble to get says that there is a bug into png support of java and some png cannot be decoded, for some reason seems that this problem is slighty different from platform to platform.
I'm searching for some external png lib that maybe can solve this problem. Maybe i should try jai...
Cya

[Kirys]

I've uploaded a test version (i've marked as v0.7.1) that uses and external lib for png files when the native java support fails. I don't know how much that lib is good and if it will open all png files that sun imageio doesn't.
Due to the use of this lib the program will use more ram when loading images from a zip/cbz file.
Let me know if it does fix your issues

[splat]

Originally Posted by Kirys

I've uploaded a test version (i've marked as v0.7.1) that uses and external lib for png files when the native java support fails.

Worked like a charm. Converted all the png files I was using in the test yesterday.

I havn't had a chance to do a compare on the output of .7.0 and .7.1 on the iLiad yet, but the PDF looks fine.

As an added bonus, 0.7.1 creates a smaller file size on the outputed PDF

-rw------- 1 splat splat 6488630 Mar 30 18:41 c1-70.pdf
-rw------- 1 splat splat 6017109 Mar 30 18:34 c1-71.pdf


edit: looks like with the default filter settings, 0.7.1 is not as good with shading in the png, images are alot darker and as a result can lose some of the detail of the drawing. Time to play with the filter settings.

Am I correct in saying that using 0.7.1 on windows, it should give the same results at 0.7.0 as it's using the same libs?

[Kirys]

The only difference in v0.7.1 is the png read lib (that is used only when the standard lib fails).
All the rest of the engine is unchange.
Other differences may be into the interface (some menus and shortcuts)

[athlonkmf]

Hiya, i've just purchased the Sony Reader (waiting for it to be delivered right now) and have been testing your program.
It looks great!
I got some ideas for user friendly improvements though.

I have a lot of manga zip files organized into neat named (sub)folders and the zipfiles themselves are also named.

It'd be handy if a batch option is available, where you just save your settings, and then select a main folder (for instance Death Note) and it will just go into the directory, searching for available zipfiles.
Each zipfile will then be automaticly made into a pdf-document.

Another thingie is that in windows, each time you chose "Add files, directory or zip" it will jump back to "My Documents". If it remembers it's last directory then it would be much easier.

Also, in images, I think it'd be easy if the image dimensions are used to automaticly rotate a landscape image. I mean, you detect it already with H/V, why not make it rotate automaticly?
And a filter to not include certain named files is handy too (like coverpages)

Are you planning to release the code into gpl? if so, I might be able to help out a bit, although my java is a bit rusty...

[Kirys]

So you are mainly asking for a batch mode .
I've planned a batch mode, but first i want to solve a quality issue with the resample of images (java2d is pretty bad when enlarging BW images). Till now i could not find a lib for image resampling that doesn't use the JAI libs. But using jai means add a 2 mb jar to the already too big package .
And latley I had not much free time so the developing is on idle for a wile.
About the license:
I do plan to release it under Gpl or othe Open License but till now i'm not sure of which license to choose (i'm open to suggestion). And before that i first want to complete the architecture of the software.

So if someone knows a good lib for resizing images that doesn't use JAI just let me know!
Bye
Kirys

[athlonkmf]

Originally Posted by Kirys

So you are mainly asking for a batch mode .
I've planned a batch mode, but first i want to solve a quality issue with the resample of images (java2d is pretty bad when enlarging BW images). Till now i could not find a lib for image resampling that doesn't use the JAI libs. But using jai means add a 2 mb jar to the already too big package .
And latley I had not much free time so the developing is on idle for a wile.
About the license:
I do plan to release it under Gpl or othe Open License but till now i'm not sure of which license to choose (i'm open to suggestion). And before that i first want to complete the architecture of the software.

So if someone knows a good lib for resizing images that doesn't use JAI just let me know!
Bye
Kirys

Well, i'm not too familiair with OS-licenses so no suggestions there.

I've been programming a C#-tool for myself yesterday to see how it works (and trying to get RAR-support too)

My folders contains either zipped, rarred or extracted images and are usually structured like this:
c:\death_note\vol01.zip, c:\death_note\vol02.zip, etc


My program works like this:
-Select a source folder (ex. c:\death_note)
-Extract/move the files to a temp-dir like c:\temp\vol01\ch01 c:\temp\vol01\ch02.
-I'm using imagemagick to filter, resize and convert the images to GIF*.
-The converted images are saved with the folder as prefix (so c:\processed\vol01\ch01_01.gif)
-Then i'm using itext to create the PDF. My initial idea would be to make the original zip-name the "chapter". So vol01 would be a chapter, vol02 the 2nd, etc.
-And finally use rasterfarian to convert the PDF to lrf (because I couldn't find the specs for lrf)

*Image quality: i played around iwth the filters of imagemagick and found out that these are the best for text and images: catrom,lanzcos and sinc.
(see attached post)

I'm still trying to figure itext out. Can you tell me what kind of settings you're using to to create the document and add the images? I can't seem to create the pages in the size you have....
(i'm still waiting for my reader, so I can't test for myself)

[ndrake]

Originally Posted by Kirys

So if someone knows a good lib for resizing images that doesn't use JAI just let me know!
Bye
Kirys

How about ImageMagick?

http://www.darcynorman.net/2005/03/1...image-resizing

[Kirys]

To answer you both
I was looking at imagemagic, but it would be an optional support cause i don't want people to be forced to install something for using this software.

Embeding is not possible cause would not be cross platform, I've started this project mainly because i want something completely crossplatform (i'm a linux user).

about the sisez for the iliad I'm using
Images 768x935
MediaBox 351fx427.32f

while for the sony
Images 583x753
MediaBox 250fx322.9f

I've found a workaround to improve the quality of enlarged images so soon i'll post a version with this fix
Cya

P.S.
If someone could point me to the mediabox and image size for the iliad with the fullscreen patch i would be glad to add those