Workflow · Comics & Manga
ScanTailor for Comics and Manga: Digitizing Your Own Collection
This workflow is about the comics and manga already on your own shelves — the floppies, tankōbon, and graphic novels you want to read on a tablet, back up against yellowing paper, or stop re-handling in their bags and boards. ScanTailor Advanced’s mixed output modes and panel-aware content selection fit comics unusually well, once you set it up for art instead of text.
How comics pages differ from book pages
ScanTailor was built around text pages, and comics break its assumptions in three friendly ways. The “content” is not a text block but a grid of panels that often runs close to the page edges, sometimes bleeding off them entirely. The page mixes line art, flat color or screentones, and lettering — all of which deserve different treatment. And the gutter matters: a two-page spread is one composition, not two pages that happen to be adjacent. None of this stops ScanTailor from being useful; it just means the Output and Select Content stages carry the workflow, instead of binarization.
Capture notes for bound comics
Tankōbon and trade paperbacks are bound like books, with art that often dives toward the spine — capture them with the same care as any bound volume (our hardware guide compares overhead, flatbed, and camera setups), in color, at a resolution from the DPI guide that suits small lettering. Single-issue floppies are flat and easy by comparison. As always with personal archives: scan your own copies, for your own reading and preservation.
Split the spreads, keep the pairing
Scanned from a bound volume, most captures arrive as two-page spreads. The Split Pages stage separates them into single pages for comfortable reading on portrait screens. Two habits help:
- Full-bleed spreads are the exception. Splash pages drawn across the gutter lose their point when split. Mark those pages to keep as a single wide page, and read them in landscape — one deliberate exception is better than a batch rule applied blindly.
- Watch reading direction. Manga reads right-to-left, so the “first” page of a spread is the right one. Split order and page numbering should follow the book’s own direction, or the story will read backwards. Check the first spread carefully before batching the volume.
Select Content around the panels
On text pages, Select Content finds the text block. On comics pages, your content box should follow the panel grid — and panels frequently sit closer to the trim edge than any text block would. Automatic detection may clip an edge panel that bleeds to the border, or include a strip of scanner bed on a page whose art stops short. Walk the first several pages manually, set a box that respects the art, and check any page where the artwork touches the page edge. Follow with Page Layout margins kept slim and uniform: comics art wants the screen, and consistent geometry keeps panel grids aligned from page to page.
Output modes: the real decision
Color books
Keep color output. Comics color is flat and graphic, and it carries storytelling information — time of day, mood, character coding — that grayscale throws away. Your cleaned color pages are the masters; compress later, at assembly time, if file size matters.
Black-and-white manga
Grayscale is usually the right master format: it preserves screentones, ink washes, and delicate line work that binarization would crush into blobs or break into dots. A black-and-white output copy can still be made for small file size, but make it a copy — see the threshold warning below.
Mixed mode
Where a page combines crisp lettering with tonal art — common in graphic novels and in comics with painted art over inked borders — mixed output lets picture zones stay tonal while the rest goes high-contrast. It is the closest match to how the page was actually printed.
Screentones vs thresholds: manga screentone is a pattern of tiny dots, and aggressive binarization thresholds love turning patterns into moiré mush or solid black. If you do make a B/W reading copy, test the pages with the densest tones first, using the gentler methods compared in our threshold methods guide — and keep the grayscale masters regardless.
Deskew deserves a mention here too: panel borders are long straight lines, and the human eye is merciless about a panel grid that leans. A fraction of a degree, invisible in a novel, is obvious in a comic. Run the batch workflow only after a full chapter passes your own read-through on the device you will actually read on — a tablet in your case, most likely — assembled as a simple PDF or via the DjVu route if you prefer compact files.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I scan my manga in black-and-white mode?
No — capture and keep grayscale masters. Screentones, ink washes, and fine line art need those grey levels. A black-and-white reading copy can be derived later with a gentle threshold, but binarizing at capture or master stage permanently destroys tone information.
How do I handle two-page splash spreads?
Split ordinary spreads into single pages with the Split Pages stage, but mark true splash spreads — art composed across the gutter — to stay as one wide page and read them in landscape. Apply the exception deliberately, page by page, rather than letting a batch rule cut the centerpiece in half.
Which ScanTailor output mode suits color comics?
Color output for color books, since the color carries story information. Mixed mode fits pages that combine tonal art with crisp lettering. In all cases the ScanTailor output pages are masters — final file-size decisions belong to the assembly step afterwards, not to destructive output settings.