Digital Raws
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.
After extraction, they made need to be post-processed.
Online Sources
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). 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.
Screenshotting
A usually easy way, but can be low quality due to the resampling that may occur, and is labor-intensive.
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.
- pdfcpu
- Install pdfcpu
- Ensure the executable's directory is on your PATH variable
- Open the directory the PDF file is in
- Run
$ pdfcpu.exe images extract .\RAW_INPUT.pdf
- This will output the files in the same directory as the file. To change the output directory, append an output directory path to the command.
- Poppler Tools' pdfimages tool
- Install Poppler Tools
- Ensure the bin directory is on your PATH variable
- Open the directory the PDF file is in
- Run
$ pdfimages -png RAW_FILE.pdf ./
- This will output the files in the same directory as the file. Change the final argument to change the path of the output directory.
Amazon
This requires extremely light knowledge of Python. No code is required.
- Buy the manga (on Amazon)
- Go to your content library
- Find the manga
- Select "Download & transfer via USB" and download the archive
- Download Python
- Ensure Python is on your PATH variable in some way
- Clone the https://github.com/kevinhendricks/KindleUnpack git repo
- Open the KindleUnpack directory in a terminal
- Run
$ python .\KindleUnpack.pyw
- A GUI should appear
- Select the Kindle file as the "input file"
- Select the output directory
- Check "Use HD Images If Present"
- Click the "Start" button