How do you manage your digital comics?

[draw2much]

I've been collecting digital comics for a long time now (more than 10 years). My filing system for it is... dubious. I mean, at least each comic is in a folder with it's name in there. But after over 10 years, there's so many files.... trying to find anything is a headache. A lot of these comic titles aren't in English so I can't even search for them to find them.

After discovering Calibre for managing eBooks, I thought: What a great system! I can use this for my eComics too! I mean, I use Calibre to convert the comics I've bought from the Big A, so why not?

It does the management portion great, though the reader is absolutely worthless. Anything outside of cbz/cbr basically won't be viewed correctly. ePub as a comic format is like punching oneself "for fun".

I've been converting everything into cbz because I realized that, just in general, it's a better format than ZIP when it comes to how programs view sequential images in reader programs. But just about all my comics are in ZIP format....

I'm wondering: Am I doing this the hard way?

Technically it does work, but I've got a lot of comics and I might be dead before I'm finished at this rate.

So what I want to know, how are you managing your digital comics within Calibre? Or did you read this think "Why the heck would you use Calibre for this when XYZ does it so much better!" Please share with me your wisdom and knowledge and help find shortcuts so I don't slowly drive myself crazy trying to organize my comic collection....

(For those curious, I use Windows 10 and have a Poke 2.)

[ownedbycats]

I use Comic Book Archive Creator when I have a zip file.

Then I import it to Calibre and use the Open With plugin to open it with ComicTagger to get the proper metadata.

Then I use Embed Comic Metadata to import the new comic metadata into Calibre.

For viewing itself, don't use the internal Calibre viewer because it kind of sucks for image-heavy formats. I like YACReader but there's other programs too. You can disable the internal viewer in Preferences > Behaviour.

[draw2much]

Aw lordy, that Comic Book Archive Creator really saved my bacon! It makes it so I can properly arrange files within the CBZ. I had a comic with a weird numbering system that wasn't being read properly on the Poke 2 and I thought I was gonna go crazy. This program nicely solves my problem by letting me reorder pages before compiling. Thanks for introducing me to it!

Do you use Mac by any chance? In Windows 10, you don't need the Open With plugin. Just go to Calibre - Preference - Behavior and de-select whichever file format you don't want it opening. In this case it'd be CBZ. I have CDisplayEX associated with CBZ/R files in Windows. When I click on a book within Calibre, it will open CDisplayEX instead of its default reader.

I found this out while trying to figure out how to get Open With to work.

Speaking of figuring things out... I can't figure out how to install Embed Comic Metadata as the download file is a bunch of coding files and I don't know what to do with them. Do I unzip them all into a separate file?

I recently updated Calibre to 5 and I'm wondering if this plugin would even work with version 5. It hasn't been updated in over a year....

In the meantime, I've been using Mangadex and it's Information links to manually input metadata within calibre for my comics. It's not exactly the fastest method but at least it's all copy and pasting, rather than writing everything out... :/

Anyway, thanks a lot for replying!

[BetterRed]

To add a plugin, Preferences->Plugins->Get new plugins, use the Find box (top right) It will download the plugin and install it.

Pretty sure Embed Comic plugin has been updated. There's a sticky list of ported plugins at the top of the Plugins sub-forum.

BR

[MarjaE]

I have some on .pdf.

k2pdfopt -mode copy -dev dx usually works well with the Kindle Dx, but has trouble with dark text on dark backgrounds.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by draw2much

Do you use Mac by any chance? In Windows 10, you don't need the Open With plugin.

Windows 10. I use the Open With plugin mostly for the non-default viewer and various third-party utilities (e.g. epub-checker and ComicTagger).

[dunhill]

I put together a library for this purpose, this is my capture. I added the name of the artist, the color and the edition. Do you think I would miss something ???

[draw2much]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Windows 10. I use the Open With plugin mostly for the non-default viewer and various third-party utilities (e.g. epub-checker and ComicTagger).

That makes way more sense, thanks for explaining.

[draw2much]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

To add a plugin, Preferences->Plugins->Get new plugins, use the Find box (top right) It will download the plugin and install it.

Pretty sure Embed Comic plugin has been updated. There's a sticky list of ported plugins at the top of the Plugins sub-forum.

BR

I was doing that and couldn't find it. Then I realized I had the Filter list set to "Not installed" instead of "All". Anyway, I found it. I appreciate the help though.

[draw2much]

Originally Posted by dunhill

I put together a library for this purpose, this is my capture. I added the name of the artist, the color and the edition. Do you think I would miss something ???

I think that looks pretty good myself. By color, do you mean differentiating between black and white and full color comics? I hadn't thought to do that, what a good idea!

By the way, I like how you have the cover browser and the list combination. I didn't like that with my ebooks but with comics it looks good!

[draw2much]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

I have some on .pdf.

k2pdfopt -mode copy -dev dx usually works well with the Kindle Dx, but has trouble with dark text on dark backgrounds.

I have a few on PDF and I gotta say, not my preferred method. It seems to me PDF is clunky and doesn't load as well as CBZ. Plus your stuck with whatever dimensions the file is set to within each PDF page. You have to zoom to enlarge instead of just fitting to page. :/

Originally Posted by dunhill

I put together a library for this purpose, this is my capture. I added the name of the artist, the color and the edition. Do you think I would miss something ???

I like the Cover Browser + List you've got going on there. For eBooks I never liked that setup but it looks really good with comics for some reason.

By color, do you mean differentiating between black and white and full color comics? This is something I hadn't thought to do, what a good idea!

[draw2much]

Sorry about the double reply to Dunhill. Had a problem posting and I thought I lost the original reply...

[ilovejedd]

Folders works fine for me.

I remember trying ComicRack before and to me, that was much better suited at managing CBZ comics than Calibre.

[ownedbycats]

Unfortunately seeing as this is what the official website has looked like for... at least a year I'd consider it abandoned.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Unfortunately seeing as this is what the official website has looked like for... at least a year I'd consider it abandoned.

Meh, I use abandoned software all the time (e.g. CDisplay, CDisplayEX, Stanza for iOS, Marvin for iOS). As long as the programs still works for the task, I’m fine not getting updates.