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Old 03-17-2011, 08:48 PM   #1
Honf
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Mangize - a better manga converter

Hello, I've been more of a lurker, but I would have loved to have a good manga manager for the Kindle. Decided I make my own, since Mangle wasn't offering a critical feature I wanted.
First version took me ~20 hours of programming (C++, Boost, CImg). New versions will be improvements, but they will be a little more farther apart since I have the functionality I wanted (and with that gone, so is the main drive behind my motivation ). Please add feedback (feature requests or bug reports/strange behavior).

Latest version: v0.31 (26.3.2011)

Current features:
- Very fast thanks to C++ (converting 5 chapters (total of 130 images) takes ~4 minutes at maximum compression and quality on a single 2Ghz core)
- Multi threading support (3 cores @ 3Ghz process 200 images at maximum compression and quality in a little over a minute )
- Low memory footprint (~30MB RAM max, depends on the number of threads)
- Support for almost any device!
- Removal of blank rows and columns
- High quality dithering
- High quality resampling
- Further compression of images using pngcrush
- Only jpg and png support for now, please comment if you want anything else (planing on adding gif and bmp later)
- Automatic generation of bookkeeping files (for kindle)
- Output settings (landscape/portrait mode, custom resolution)
- Automatic conversion of color pictures to grayscale


Latest version change log:

(26.3.2011) v0.31 (see attachment)
- resizing bug fix (didn't scale properly)
- fixed program crash involving tightness setting

(23.3.2011) v0.3 (see attachment)
- added progress bar
- updated user interface
- exposed more settings to user, should make it compatible with a lot more devices now
- added ability to save your settings
- fixed landscape rotation bug (caused some images to be falsely rotated, reported by psycholoner)

Change logs:
Spoiler:


(22.3.2011) v 0.26 version2 (see attachment)
- previous fix has a bug in it, fixed it now

(22.3.2011) v 0.26 (deleted)
- fixed bug, kindle bookkeeping files were not generating

(22.3.2011) v 0.25 (deleted)
- fixed some strange image rotation bug
- HUGE performance boost from added fullscale multithreading (image processing and image crushing are both parallelized ). You need more cores to see more improvement though
- removed a useless check for file order

(20.3.2011) v 0.24 (deleted)
- fixed crash when converting grayscale images

(20.3.2011)
- added a few more options
- added detection of color pictures and automatic conversion to grayscale
- added check to see that files are ordered properly (if you see them ordered in your filebrowser, so will mangize)

(19.3.2011) - Version 0.23 (deleted attachment)
- Added custom resolution output (defaults to 800x600)
- Added landscape output mode
- Added toggle to enable rotation of images in landscape to portrait (enabled by default)
- Added toggle for custom output folder

(19.3.2011) - Version 0.22 (deleted attachment)
- Added custom resolution output (defaults to 800x600)
- Added landscape output mode
- Added toggle to enable rotation of images in landscape to portrait (enabled by default)
- Added toggle for custom output folder

(18.3.2011) - Version 0.21 (deleted attachment)
- minor bugfixes
- kindle didn't like extreme png compression, had to turn a setting off.

(18.3.2011) - Version 0.2 (deleted attachment)
- added automatic pngcrush support (reduces file size by a further ~5-10%, but doubles total processing time)
- added toggle for dithering (quite useless, since you never want to turn it off anyhow)
- added toggle for pngcrush
- added Automatic generation of bookkeeping files (so kindle displays collections)

(17.3.2011) - Version 0.1 (removed attachment)
- Removal of blank lines and rows in manga (gives more screen space for letters which are already small)
- Scaling down using the best possible resampling
- Dithering using the best possible dither (Floyd–Steinberg dithering)
- Auto turning of landscape pictures
- a few more nice bits
- png, bmp, jpg support

----




Todo:
- gif, bmp support
- requests?


Program is around ~3MB and requires no external libraries (except for pngcrush, if you want to use it).

Results (hope I'm not breaking any copyright with these pics):

Example 1:
Original
Processed

Example 2:
Original
Processed


Dithering isn't very noticable in this example, but I have a few more and, at least to me, it looks better then Mangle, but it isn't really noticable on the device itself.
Attached Files
File Type: rar mangize_v0.26_v2.rar (1.11 MB, 662 views)
File Type: rar Mangize v0.3.rar (1.15 MB, 527 views)
File Type: rar Mangize v0.31.rar (1.15 MB, 4560 views)

Last edited by Honf; 03-26-2011 at 05:52 PM.
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Old 03-18-2011, 04:53 AM   #2
mobad
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This looks pretty cool.

I just want to mention that a lesser known manga converter called Canti has almost all those features (although I'm not sure about the dithering and resizing method), auto splitting landscape 2-page scans except when the two pages form one giant image, trimming, auto cbz creation, colour quantization should be in the next release and much more.

http://www.bitcake.com/?page=project_canti

Edit: Just looked closer at the image and saw what you meant by removal of rows and columns, that's pretty awesome, Canti doesn't do that but it trims white space around the image.

Edit: Now Canti does http://www.bitcake.com/?entry=entry110322-143300

Last edited by mobad; 03-22-2011 at 03:04 PM.
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Old 03-18-2011, 05:33 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by mobad View Post
Edit: Just looked closer at the image and saw what you meant by removal of rows and columns, that's pretty awesome, Canti doesn't do that but it trims white space around the image.
That is the only reason I started work on this application. Plus this should be much faster compared to Canti, since it's not running any kind of virtual machine (downside is that it currently only runs on windows. I'll release the source code when I add a few more features though, so someone can port it then)

Will definitely check Canti out
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Old 03-18-2011, 05:04 PM   #4
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Edited OP. Mangas processed by the program can be now cop/ pasted with no fiddling to the kindle.

Updated program (v0.2) is in OP attachments (also added pngcrush.exe to the zip)

Edit:
Updated attachment. Kindle didn't like a few things pngcrush did to the images. Compression is now down to ~10%. Will look into using gifs.

Last edited by Honf; 03-18-2011 at 06:10 PM.
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Old 03-18-2011, 05:27 PM   #5
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This looks interesting I will check it out later =]

Last edited by CarlBullock; 04-26-2011 at 05:00 PM.
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Old 03-18-2011, 07:48 PM   #6
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Any chance of letting user specify output sizes? I know it's a planned feature, but really eager to convert to another resolution, as I read mainly in landscape format, ie 800x?

It's a surprisingly quick and small program. Really impressed with how well it runs even on a netbook.
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Old 03-18-2011, 08:06 PM   #7
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I'll have it done in ~24 hours (+ specifying the output folder).

I was reading some manga just now and I found landscape is much better on the eyes.
Need sleep now.

Last edited by Honf; 03-19-2011 at 07:09 AM.
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Old 03-19-2011, 07:09 AM   #8
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New version up (v0.22)

Added a few more settings that are use changeable. Didn't bug test too much, so tell me if program crashes or produces strange output.

Edit2:

Fixed a bug, added a sanity check for output directory (still same version, won't increment)
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Old 03-19-2011, 08:10 AM   #9
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I just ordered a 10in android tablet, mainly for reading digital manga, so I'll definitely be checking out this program.

And I just realized, this is only for Kindle, isn't it?
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Old 03-19-2011, 08:37 AM   #10
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And I just realized, this is only for Kindle, isn't it?
I'm working on making it work for any device you want it too. As it is now you can use it just fine, but the images will be dithered to the Kindle 3/DX display, but that shouldn't be noticeable when compared with full gray scale images, due to the screen size.

Just to be sure, I'll put in a toggle to preserve full grayscale images in the next version then.

Program should be updated by the time you get your tablet.
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Old 03-19-2011, 10:07 AM   #11
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I'm afraid I've given up on it. I tried to convert things and it was too much effort, the order of the images were all over the place (even ones numbered properly), as in totally random order - it takes hours to organise if there are a few hundred images.

Plus the save, open, etc options don't work - so if you want to redo the same project you have to start all over again. I'm using it under Ubuntu, so it may be an incomplete conversion, but no, takes waaay too much time.

That said the image quality was quite good. It's a good idea, and if it were working - but as it is, waaaay too time consuming.
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Old 03-19-2011, 10:11 AM   #12
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I'm afraid I've given up on it. I tried to convert things and it was too much effort, the order of the images were all over the place (even ones numbered properly), as in totally random order - it takes hours to organise if there are a few hundred images.

Plus the save, open, etc options don't work - so if you want to redo the same project you have to start all over again. I'm using it under Ubuntu, so it may be an incomplete conversion, but no, takes waaay too much time.

That said the image quality was quite good. It's a good idea, and if it were working - but as it is, waaaay too time consuming.
Must be a problem running it under Wine.
I agree that if it's not ordered it useless. Could you try it out on a windows machine?
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Old 03-19-2011, 10:24 AM   #13
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Indeed a definitely better Manga converter Honf. Thanks.

But scans of full size comic books (larger than the typical Manga) are still too small to read comfortably on the Kindle3 screen. Have you considered something like https://launchpad.net/comicstrip to extract each frame of a page and create individual .pngs? Resizing then each frame to the Kindle screen size would much enhance readability.
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Old 03-19-2011, 10:29 AM   #14
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Indeed a definitely better Manga converter Honf. Thanks.

But scans of full size comic books (larger than the typical Manga) are still too small to read comfortably on the Kindle3 screen. Have you considered something like https://launchpad.net/comicstrip to extract each frame of a page and create individual .pngs? Resizing then each frame to the Kindle screen size would much enhance readability.
I have an algorithm already though out on a page somewhere that *should* do that (identify and separate panels). There are a lot of edge case issues with it, especially characters that are out of frames or strange borderless panel.

I guess I could put it in as an experimental feature in the future. It would work perfectly for "normal" manga panels. It's the occasional exotic arrangement of out-of-panel items that is hard to correct for.

Last edited by Honf; 03-19-2011 at 10:44 AM.
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Old 03-19-2011, 10:38 AM   #15
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I wasn't running it wine, just running the pwf script. Never used wine - I'd give it a go, but I'm hunting up canti now instead.
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