902 Comic book / PB902 side by side comparison

[Lester Burnham]

Before I got the PB902 I looked everywhere for a good representation of how well comics would transfer to the ereader. Some people say that no ereader works well enough for it and some folks say it's great, some say it's all right enough etc...

Well I took a scan of a comic I have and used Calibre to convert it to PDF and put it on the 902 for a side by side comparison. My hope is that it helps those who are thinking about getting the 902 but aren't quite sure about the comic capabilities.

Keep in mind 3 things. I've had the 902 for less than 24 hours so far, I've used Calibre a total of 4 times and these pictures don't do it full justice.

Is it better than an actually comic book? No. But it's definitely not bad. Not bad at all.

[replica145]

Looks pretty good.

I wanna scan Absolute Sandman but it cost a small fortune and I don't wanna hurt it

[Hekse-Mie]

I agree, it seems not bad at all

[jpsoulac33]

Hello, it seems very good... but what is your configuration of calibre when you want to transfer the comics on a pdf???

[Lester Burnham]

Originally Posted by jpsoulac33

Hello, it seems very good... but what is your configuration of calibre when you want to transfer the comics on a pdf???

From what I can see there aren't really many options to tweak when converting pictures to PDF format. There are options but I think they apply more to how actual text is displayed, which has nothing to do with text on a picture. So, the only thing I actually select is the Kindle DX output profile in the Page Setup tab. If I'm going about it all wrong, please show me a better way. I'm still very new to this program and ereaders in general.

[jpsoulac33]

I do the same than you (Lester Burnham) but i find the text is not very readable (it depends ). The best way for me is to dezip the cbr and zip files into a folder (the comics is on jpeg). After i create a folder in my pocketbook where i put any comics (one folder for one comics and subfolder for every episode). With the finder i come to my comic's folder and i can see each page and it looks very good (better than the kindle dx's pdf). Problem: when you finish to read and you quit the jpeg comics you can't return on the good page...

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by jpsoulac33

I do the same than you (Lester Burnham) but i find the text is not very readable (it depends ). The best way for me is to dezip the cbr and zip files into a folder (the comics is on jpeg). After i create a folder in my pocketbook where i put any comics (one folder for one comics and subfolder for every episode). With the finder i come to my comic's folder and i can see each page and it looks very good (better than the kindle dx's pdf). Problem: when you finish to read and you quit the jpeg comics you can't return on the good page...

Yes, and this is exactly why I wrote my own script to create a PDF. You get the full image resolution and you get to treat it as a book (i.e. remember the last page read, add bookmarks,...). However, I just noticed that Calibre has a "Tablet" option in the "Page Layout" menu, and the tool-tip indicates that it won't resize the images in that mode. So, "Tablet" sounds better than the "Kindle DX" page layout for use with the 9.7in devices.

[Lester Burnham]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Yes, and this is exactly why I wrote my own script to create a PDF. You get the full image resolution and you get to treat it as a book (i.e. remember the last page read, add bookmarks,...). However, I just noticed that Calibre has a "Tablet" option in the "Page Layout" menu, and the tool-tip indicates that it won't resize the images in that mode. So, "Tablet" sounds better than the "Kindle DX" page layout for use with the 9.7in devices.

The DX and the 902/903 have the same screen.

I just tried the "Tablet" setting and it's not too bad. It made the file a little larger of course. It made the pages too narrow and long to be able to read a full page at a time also. So, zoom and scroll is a must. I'm not a big fan of that though. I like to read one full page at a time. Seems more natural, comic book like to me. To each their own. I haven't run into any text issues yet so maybe I'll have to adapt and get used to the zoom and scroll method when I do. Comics do look pretty nice when in landscape mode though.

"CBR" - 11MB
"DX" output format - 19MB
"Tablet" output format - 30MB

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Lester Burnham

The DX and the 902/903 have the same screen.

I just tried the "Tablet" setting and it's not too bad. It made the file a little larger of course. It made the pages too narrow and long to be able to read a full page at a time also. So, zoom and scroll is a must. I'm not a big fan of that though. I like to read one full page at a time. Seems more natural, comic book like to me. To each their own. I haven't run into any text issues yet so maybe I'll have to adapt and get used to the zoom and scroll method when I do. Comics do look pretty nice when in landscape mode though.

"CBR" - 11MB
"DX" output format - 19MB
"Tablet" output format - 30MB

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

If the pages are too long and narrow in Tablet (un-resized) mode, then the DX mode must be changing the aspect ratio of the images (i.e. making them wider). If you didn't notice, then I guess it wasn't enough distortion to make things look weird to you. The size differences are also interesting. It's normal that "Tablet" is bigger than "DX", but it's strange that "DX" is bigger than the original size. I guess Calibre is using non-lossy compression, just to be safe. However, it would be nice if it just used the same data as in the original if possible.

[Lester Burnham]

Originally Posted by rkomar

If the pages are too long and narrow in Tablet (un-resized) mode, then the DX mode must be changing the aspect ratio of the images (i.e. making them wider). If you didn't notice, then I guess it wasn't enough distortion to make things look weird to you.

Right you are. It is changing the aspect ratio. I honestly hadn't noticed. If you check out the text boxes in the pictures. You can see the difference easily.

I've read a number of comics already and to my eye nothing has seemed wonky. Hopefully I'll continue to not notice the aspect change. lol

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Lester Burnham

Right you are. It is changing the aspect ratio. I honestly hadn't noticed. If you check out the text boxes in this picture. You can see the difference easily.

They look pretty close to me, so I wouldn't have noticed. Anyway, I have a decent scanner for books, but the scale is slightly different in the vertical and horizontal directions. The scanned pages always come out looking less wide than they should. Maybe this is true for most scanners. If Calibre just happened to change the aspect ratio and make the pages look slightly wider, they could end up looking more like the original book than the unresized scans. So, maybe your process balanced out nicely in the end.

[Yar-PocketBooker]

Lester, thanks a lot for showing those pictures here, they do look nat bad at all at PB902!

[Lester Burnham]

Originally Posted by Yar-PocketBooker

Lester, thanks a lot for showing those pictures here, they do look nat bad at all at PB902!

Just trying to help those wanting to read comics on an ereader. I'll post more comparisons if I find anything worth noting. So far the PB902 has handled everything I've thrown at it with flying colors....er.. flying b&w.

[Lester Burnham]

One more side by side for good measure.

[rkomar]

So, do the comics have the same feel to you as you read them, or does the colour to grey scale switch give them a different flavour?