Put the reader in vertical mode, make sure you’re zoomed out, and have the window be taller than it is wide. Tested on 2025-10-18.
Put the reader in vertical mode, make sure you’re zoomed out, and have the window be taller than it is wide. Tested on 2025-10-18 on Chromium; it doesn’t appear to work on Firefox (details below).
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If you ever want to use horizontal mode, keep in mind that the bottom two rows of pixels will be a barcode that identifies your user account. So make sure to crop this out.
If you ever want to use horizontal mode (which may require modifications to the script), keep in mind that the bottom two rows of pixels will be a barcode that identifies your user account. So make sure to crop this out.
Common errors:
* “pages not at full height”: Make sure you’re zoomed out and in vertical mode.
* “The operation is insecure.”: Happens on Firefox. This appears to be caused by BookWalker loading the images in an entirely different way on Firefox than Chromium (on Firefox, it uses <code><img></code> tags, while on Chromium it uses XHR, and only Chromium uses a CORS request – and a CORS request is necessary for extracting image content – since a CORS request is required with XHR but not for plain images). If you really want to use Firefox you can [https://stackoverflow.com/a/35760327 compile it yourself], but otherwise you have to use Chromium for this.
=== BookLive ===
=== BookLive ===
Revision as of 22:23, 18 October 2025
The first step in the process of scanlating any manga is obtaining the raws. The first step is to download the file the raws are in, then the second step is to extract the raws from this file.
Raws can often be found on piracy websites dedicated to hosting them (none are listed here to avoid link rot, but they can be found on the Internet). They are often lower quality than ripping the raws yourself, so this is not preferred. Be aware that some websites will add watermarks; since it is best practice to not keep watermarks from these sites (the only kind of acceptable watermark is an author watermark), one will either have to manually clean them or find a different source.
Useful tools
There are some general-purpose manga downloading tools; a notable one is HakuNeko. Alex's Raw Downloader is really simple to use for sites that it's compatible with (click "Info" on the site for a full list of compatible sites).
Websites that allow online viewing of manga will often render the images in a <canvas> element, which can then be extracted with canvas ripping, or using browser extensions like Canvas Downloader for Chrome, ImageAssistant for Chrome or Image Picka for Firefox. Be aware that resampling may occur. Some websites like Bookwalker add a near-invisible barcode at the bottom that points to your account, which can be difficult to remove.
A useful tool is this Stack Overflow answer which provides a script/bookmarklet that re-enables the ability to right-click on websites that have disabled it.
Screenshotting
Usually possible to perform, but is almost always lower quality due to the resampling that may occur, and is labor-intensive. Basically, don’t rip manga pages this way.
PDF
PDF raws are most common when obtaining self-published raws from websites such as https://booth.pm/en
Most raw PDFs are single pages with the images embedded in each page. So the next step is to extract the images that are embedded. There are two tools that are often used.
Canvas ripping involves obtaining raws by extracting image content from its already-rendered form on the website.
Advantages:
It usually can be performed with just a web browser and no external software.
It doesn’t rely on DRM-cracking shenanigans.
If you know a bit of web dev these methods are very easy to develop and modify.
Disadvantages:
Might involve more manual work than some methods (though it’s still fast anyway).
The resulting files will be PNG files instead of the original JPEGs/WEBPs, and are thus generally larger (you can use our image compression tool to reduce their size a little, but it still won’t be as small).
You have to be careful to avoid resampling, as if the images are resized on the website before you download them, quality is reduced.
If you want to use canvas-ripping, here is a brief comparison of some online bookstores that I compared for this purpose:
BookWalker: The highest quality of the options I found.
cmoa: Lower quality than Bookwalker, at least in the preview.
k-manga: The preview resized the image 4px smaller than the original resolution, which really messes up screentones.
Kobo: Region-locked, so I didn’t try it (it’s possible to insert fake details to get around the region lock).
BookLive: Slightly lower quality than BookWalker (at least in the preview).
For each site, we give a code snippet that scrapes from that site. The intended usage is to save the code snippet as a bookmark in your web browser, click the bookmark while looking at the site, and then scroll through the manga to download all of the pages. Alternatively, you can go open developer tools (e.g. via inspect element) and paste the snippets in the “Console” tab.
BookWalker
Put the reader in vertical mode, make sure you’re zoomed out, and have the window be taller than it is wide. Tested on 2025-10-18 on Chromium; it doesn’t appear to work on Firefox (details below).
javascript:(() => {
const q = new Set();
const a = document.createElement("a");
const d = document.querySelector(".dummy");
const w = d.width;
const h = d.height;
setInterval((() => {
for (const e of document.getElementById("canvasCluster").children) {
const c = e.children[1];
if (!e.id.startsWith("wideScreen") || 255 !== c.getContext("2d").getImageData(0, 0, 1, 1).data[3]) continue;
if (c.height !== d.height) throw new Error("pages not at full height");
d.getContext("2d").drawImage(c, Math.ceil((c.width - w) / 2), 0, w, h, 0, 0, w, h);
const t = e.id.slice(10).padStart(3, "0");
if (q.has(t)) continue;
a.href = d.toDataURL();
a.download = `${t}.png`;
a.click();
q.add(t);
}
}), 100);
})()
If you ever want to use horizontal mode (which may require modifications to the script), keep in mind that the bottom two rows of pixels will be a barcode that identifies your user account. So make sure to crop this out.
Common errors:
“pages not at full height”: Make sure you’re zoomed out and in vertical mode.
“The operation is insecure.”: Happens on Firefox. This appears to be caused by BookWalker loading the images in an entirely different way on Firefox than Chromium (on Firefox, it uses <img> tags, while on Chromium it uses XHR, and only Chromium uses a CORS request – and a CORS request is necessary for extracting image content – since a CORS request is required with XHR but not for plain images). If you really want to use Firefox you can compile it yourself, but otherwise you have to use Chromium for this.
BookLive
This bookmarklet can also be used for cmoa. Put the reader in vertical mode, make sure you’re zoomed out, and have the window be taller than it is wide. Tested on 2025-08-22.
javascript:(()=>{const done=new Set,a=document.createElement("a"),cv=document.createElement("canvas"),c2=cv.getContext("2d");setInterval((()=>{for(const t of document.getElementById("content").children){if(!t.id.startsWith("content-p"))continue;const e=t.id.slice(9).padStart(3,"0");if(done.has(e))continue;const n=[...t.getElementsByTagName("img")];if(0===n.length||n.some((t=>!t.complete)))continue;const c=n.map(((t,e)=>{if(e===n.length-1)return[t,t.naturalHeight-2];const a=t.getBoundingClientRect(),c=n[e+1].getBoundingClientRect();return[t,Math.round((c.y-a.y)/a.height*t.naturalHeight)]}));cv.width=Math.max(...n.map((t=>t.naturalWidth))),cv.height=c.reduce(((t,[e,n])=>t+n),0);let o=0;for(const[t,e]of c)c2.drawImage(t,0,o),o+=e;a.href=cv.toDataURL(),a.download=`${e}.png`,a.click(),done.add(e)}}),100)})()
Zero Sum Online
Tested on 2025-02-03.
javascript:(()=>{const t=new Set,e=document.createElement("a"),a=document.createElement("canvas"),n=a.getContext("2d");setInterval((()=>{for(const c of document.getElementsByTagName("img")){if(!c.classList.item(0)?.endsWith("_page")||!c.alt.startsWith("page_")||!c.complete)continue;const o=c.alt.slice(5).padStart(3,"0");t.has(o)||(a.width=c.naturalWidth,a.height=c.naturalHeight,n.drawImage(c,0,0),e.href=a.toDataURL(),e.download=`${o}.png`,e.click(),t.add(o))}}),100);})()
Take Comic
To prevent resampling, follow these steps:
Open developer tools (e.g. using inspect element), go to the Sources tab, and open the “Page” sub-tab on the left.
On the left sidebar, find the file top → takecomic.jp → js/viewer → viewer.js. Right-click it and select “Override Content”.
Press the {} button in the bottom-left of the middle panel to see the code.
Press Ctrl+F, and search for “drawImage”. There should be a section that says something along the lines of:
o.width = y * b,
o.height = w * b,
s.drawImage(c, 0, 0, r, i, 0, 0, y * b, w * b),
In these three lines, replace both instances of y * b with r, and both instances of w * b with i (of course, adjust accordingly if these variables have different names).
Save the file and reload the page.
Now use the bookmarklet:
javascript:(()=>{const a=document.createElement("a"),q=new Map;let i=0;for(const p of document.querySelectorAll("#xCVPages>.-cv-page"))q.set(p,i++);setInterval(()=>{for(const p of document.querySelectorAll(".-cv-page.mode-rendered")){if(!q.has(p))continue;a.href=p.querySelector("canvas").toDataURL(),a.download=`${q.get(p)}.png`.padStart(7,"0"),a.click(),q.delete(p)}},100)})()
Tested on a free chapter on 2025-10-17.
Bookwalker alternative method
This is an alternative to the canvas ripping method, but is likely less convenient and secure.
This requires downloading a modified Chromium executable on a Windows computer and the ability to run a PowerShell command.
Warning: The Chromium client downloaded here bypasses safety features and should not be used for anything other than downloading manga from Bookwalker.
These instructions apply to the latest version at the time of writing, version 0.3.3:
Bookwalker window sized for downloadingBuy the manga on Bookwalker. For most Japanese releases, you will need to use the Japanese site, not the global site.
Open a powsershell or cmd in the unzipped browser dir:
Navigate to the unzipped directory in explorer.
Shift + right-click in the folder.
Select "Open PowerShell window here".
Open the browser with command line: .\chrome.exe --user-data-dir=c:\bw-downloader-profile --no-sandbox
Log into you Bookwalker account in the launched Chromium window.
Open the book you want to rip in the viewer.
Adjust the window so exactly one page is visible.
If you can get the script to automatically click (step 6 here), that's good, but it is not working at the time of writing due to Bookwalker code changes.
Instead, you can just click through the manga you are ripping, one page at a time (giving each page enough time to load).
After you've clicked through all the pages you want to rip, the pages will be in C:\bw_export_data under a folder with a name matching the ID in the Bookwalker URL.
Creating a shortcut
Creating a shortcut for Bookwalker downloader Chromium
To create a shortcut that launches the modified Chromium application with the appropriate permissions:
Right-click on chrome.exe and select "Create shortcut".
Right-click on the new shortcut and select "Properties".
Select "Target" and move the cursor to the end.
Paste --user-data-dir=c:\bw-downloader-profile --no-sandbox (including the space before)
The new "Target" should look like C:\path\to\Chrome-bin\chrome.exe --user-data-dir=c:\bw-downloader-profile --no-sandbox.