Comic Makers, are you tired of making 300x300 icons for your Tapastic Comic?

[dlbucci]

Me too! I was sick of making icons for my webcomic, Super FTC! (sorry for the shameless plug), so I made Crop And Share! It's a simple static webpage that will let you pick an image, pick where you want to crop and scale the image to get the size you need. It's made making comic icons a lot easier for me (vs my old strategy of using preview and a different webapp to scale them), so I thought I would share it with everyone.

Let me know what you think or if you think it could be improved in some way!

[Strontium]

I clicked the link but got a 404 error

[dlbucci]

Whoops! I keep wanting to call it Crop and Share for some reason. Should be fixed now, and thanks for the heads up!

[ikushina]

well, i don't mind it. just takes 2 secs~
i make a new one for each episode of 'manyak comics' but for my other comic i just use the same one for each page of the chapter, and when i reach a new chapter i change the thumbnail too : D so it's like, easier to distinguish between the chapters.

//btw i crop it in paint tool sai//

[PotooGryphon]

I am slightly inconvenienced by making an icon for comic episodes, however, what would truly make it easier is if the Tapastic website was able to let you choose an icon from an upload page in the episode (much like the sharing thumbnail) or let you upload your own image.

Being frank, I'm not sure if I understand the difference between using your Crop and Share or just using photoshop to achieve the same thing (with better image quality). ?

Glad it works for you though, and great job coding and making Crop And Share, but until Tapastic incorporates it into the website, I'll just stick to cropping in photoshop.

[colinwmd]

That's a cool idea, although I tend to want to hide any speech bubbles before selecting my icons. I do find the process annoying though, because as far as I can see in Manga Studio you can't export just a square without first cropping it. I'm perpetually worried that I'll save my cropped version over the original!

[Strontium]

Thank you! I can access it now! Maybe I will use it; I also dislike opening Photoshop just to make a thumbnail, so lazy

[shade277]

Well, awesome stuff! I`ll use it at least to cut tokens and icons for my tabletop via roll20 =)

Great job!

[shade277]

After playing in this I`m your fan now.

[jonufele]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[Silerna]

Keep forgetting to make 300x300 for each episode. So made a set of icons for all episodes so I can pick one every time I upload a new one.
Only with special episodes a special thumbnail get with it...

[dlbucci]

That's sort of neat, but it kind of stinks that it will only show the middle page. Plus, for pixel comics like my own, you've got to be careful with scaling or it won't look good.

[dlbucci]

Glad that you liked it!

[abbastudios]

I like it. Helps me to separate my chapters. I have to write, draw, letter and color a whole comic. Why get lazy on an icon? I take pride in everything related to my comic.

[bsienk90]

I don't mind, I just use the same one each week. So I made one and thats it.

[dlbucci]

@CyndiFoster I agree completely, and it's sort of weird to me that they have a tool for the sharing thumbnail but not the icon, which is the main motivation. I also don't use photoshop to make my comics, so I don't have that luxury, but yeah, that's probably just as easy (maybe with more clicks ).

@abbastudios Well I can't argue with that, but pixel art doesn't scale well and since I'm not sure I've seen an icon actually displayed at 300x300, I tend to not want to dedicate too much time to them.

[abbastudios]

I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about. I'll take a shot in the dark

In order to get no pixelation, you create your icon at 300x300 or a larger size like 600x600. Then scale the 600x600 down to 300x300.

It's stupid to do it any other way.

[dlbucci]

I meant that my comic has pixel art, which looks terrible unless you scale by an integer, in which case it actually scales much better than most other art. But you're right that down-scaling likely creates a better icon for most art styles, a fact which I hadn't even really considered. Guess I should add some more features

[abbastudios]

Now that I do know what you're talking about, here's another suggestion. Convert the pixel at to vector and you can scale up and down at will with no resolution loss.

[PotooGryphon]

Vector is my friend! I love working in vectors, especial using Manga studios. I recommend using vector as well.