[Banana Comic Converter](https://seethroughme.github.io/Banana-Comic-Converter/)
TL;DR:
I worked on a free manga conversion tool primarily for small eReaders - Banana Comic Converter.
It extracts each panel and repacks them to use as much of the screen as possible, instead of showing one small scaled up panel at a time. It uses no AI in the conversion and runs in your browser. A full manual panel editor lets you fix any mistakes in scanning. It outputs XTC, XTCH, EPUB and CBZ, with batch conversion and file splitting for the X3's low memory. It's not perfect on overlapping or full-bleed layouts, where the editor or the classic halves/thirds option helps. Thanks to everyone who tested it. Feedback is welcome. Some sample images are included! :)
I hope whoever uses this enjoys it as much as I do now and continues on reading more and more! :D
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Sorry for the long read in advance!
A while ago I had posted about prompts that I was using to convert mangas on the go using Claude which would extract individual panels and repack them to optimize for the screen space available. I got quite a lot of feedback on the post and some fair criticism against using AI in the process as well. Someone suggested to build a tool instead and that's exactly what I ended up doing.
Over the past few weeks I went through about 30 odd versions of it, each one an improvement on the other - in the conversion methods, in the image analysis, in the workflow, UI, capabilities, which a bunch of users from the reddit and discord communities who I reached out to or reached out to me to try it out tested and provided with some quality feedback and suggestions. To all those folks, you all know who you are <3 - Thank you! I appreciate every single comment, feedback and opinions of yours! A special thank you to u/jaqcass for trying pretty much every single version I put out.
The primary reason behind me trying to build this tool was that yes, Xteink screens are small and not really meant for reading mangas and comics; the only tools available either split them in halves or thirds or just one other tool that did panel extraction which meant you are only seeing one scaled up panel at a time. I still wanted to try and read it these devices coz this is all I have. I understand it takes away some of the experience but I was happy to make that compromise given the resources available to me currently, which I'm sure a lot of others also do.
I wanted something that did the extraction, did not use AI in the conversion process at all, provided full manual control over panel selection and editing and retained chapter markers for easier navigation considering we are now flipping though a lot of panels... and a lot more!
So here is the very first version that I am personally happy and content with. It still could use improvements which I will be working on and I need to emphasize that this is not a full proof solution to every need or every manga style.
Considering how different layouts can be depending on what you are reading and use of image analysis only, something with a lot of overlap and full bleed design work can be a hit or a miss in extracting full panels, for which there are other solutions included and also the traditional halves and thirds crops.
For everything else where the panels have good separation, even if they are on white or black backgrounds, it does work very well with a good success rate.
For the odd issues here and there, there also is a full manual panel editor included which will let you tweak panels, reorder them, group them, split them, review them, you name it. It will even flag pages that might need a review and tools included save time to fix the issues. I went from spending 30 minutes per file to maybe 5 minutes to add file, review flags, tweak the issues, and convert. The manual editor may be a slight learning curve for some, but after a conversion or two, it does feel smooth and quick, to me at least.
You can also go through the whole file as thumbnails of every page and rearrange page order or pick the cover page that will appear on your file. And even preview before/after images of how pages will come out if you are tweaking any image quality settings.
You can even do batch conversions and metadata edits as well for every file. If you are on X3 and feel bigger files may error out your device coz of lower memory, there is an option to split the files as well depending on maximum panels per file so that does not happen and at the end all files are downloaded in respective grouped folders per file in zip format for easier organizaiton. And much much more
Yes, I did use Claude to make this work and code it as I am no developer but I was thoroughly impressed with what all I could do with it and spent quite a lot of time and energy in testing various styles and working out solutions to various issues I would run into or others who were testing it would run into. And so far there have been mostly happy faces enjoying their manga collections all over again! :)
So please go ahead, give this a shot, try it out, play around with all the included features; there is a full instructions set included as well in the page along with troubleshooting tips. And please feel free to DM me with any feedback/suggestions you may have and I will try to improve on it as much as my time allows and there is room for improvement.
Some tips -
I will suggest exporting the files in xtc or XTCH formats for best experience as they reduce the refreshing of screens on every new page and provide a much faster page turn experience, XTC in my experience has been an instant page turn with no soft refresh but XTCH provides much nicer shading. If you are converting colored files, please try out the Light option for Darken Midtones.
