Digital Raws

From Yuri Project
Revision as of 22:52, 17 October 2025 by Valence (talk | contribs) (Update screenshotting section)

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). 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.

  1. pdfcpu
    1. Install pdfcpu
      https://github.com/pdfcpu/pdfcpu/releases/latest
    2. Ensure the executable's directory is on your PATH variable
    3. Open the directory the PDF file is in
    4. 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.
  2. Poppler Tools' pdfimages tool
    1. Install Poppler Tools
      Linux
      https://poppler.freedesktop.org/
      Windows
      https://github.com/oschwartz10612/poppler-windows/releases
      OSX
      https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/poppler
    2. Ensure the bin directory is on your PATH variable
    3. Open the directory the PDF file is in
    4. 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.

Bookwalker

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:

  1. Bookwalker window sized for downloading
    Buy the manga on Bookwalker. For most Japanese releases, you will need to use the Japanese site, not the global site.
  2. Download https://github.com/xuzhengyi1995/Manga_downloader/releases/latest
  3. Unzip the file BW-downloader-chrome-bin.zip.
  4. Open a powsershell or cmd in the unzipped browser dir:
    1. Navigate to the unzipped directory in explorer.
    2. Shift + right-click in the folder.
    3. Select "Open PowerShell window here".
  5. Open the browser with command line: .\chrome.exe --user-data-dir=c:\bw-downloader-profile --no-sandbox
  6. Log into you Bookwalker account in the launched Chromium window.
  7. Open the book you want to rip in the viewer.
  8. Adjust the window so exactly one page is visible.
  9. 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.
  10. Instead, you can just click through the manga you are ripping, one page at a time (giving each page enough time to load).
  11. 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:

  1. Right-click on chrome.exe and select "Create shortcut".
  2. Right-click on the new shortcut and select "Properties".
  3. Select "Target" and move the cursor to the end.
  4. Paste --user-data-dir=c:\bw-downloader-profile --no-sandbox (including the space before)
  5. The new "Target" should look like C:\path\to\Chrome-bin\chrome.exe --user-data-dir=c:\bw-downloader-profile --no-sandbox.

Rakuten Books / Kobo

This information is available in the Google document Guide to buy and rip books from Rakuten Books.

Canvas ripping

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: Inserts a barcode onto pages. This is hard to remove as it can cover the art, including screentones. It can be annoying to resize the window to the right size such that the image is at its native resolution.
  • 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), but very easy to scrape from.

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.

BookLive

This bookmarklet can also be used for cmoa. Open the manga, put it in vertical orientation, click the bookmarklet and then start scrolling down. Tested on 2025-08-22. If your viewport is sufficiently wide, I believe there should not be resampling issues.

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:

  1. Open developer tools (e.g. using inspect element), go to the Sources tab, and open the “Page” sub-tab on the left.
  2. On the left sidebar, find the file top → takecomic.jp → js/viewer → viewer.js. Right-click it and select “Override Content”.
  3. Press the {} button in the bottom-left of the middle panel to see the code.
  4. 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).
  5. 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

This does not remove the barcodes, so use with caution. I’m putting it here because the same techniques can likely be used on other sites. As with BookLive, put the reader in vertical mode and make sure the images are at their native resolution. Tested on 2025-02-03.

javascript:(()=>{const done=new Set,a=document.createElement("a");setInterval((()=>{for(const e of document.getElementById("canvasCluster").children){if(!e.id.startsWith("wideScreen"))continue;const t=e.id.slice(10).padStart(3,"0");if(done.has(t))continue;const n=e.children[1];255===n.getContext("2d").getImageData(0,0,n.width,n.height).data[3]&&(a.href=n.toDataURL(),a.download=`${t}.png`,a.click(),done.add(t))}}),100);})()