File size frustrations

[EmeeEms]

Hi, I'm new and I'm sorry if this is in the wrong spot. I'm having a hard time...

I'm not exactly sure how to change the file size to my comic pages. Is there a certain site that people use to do this or a specific program or can you easily do it anywhere without screwing up the quality? I just don't know how to easily do it...

Sorry if this has been asked before..

[Kayke]

How are you creating your pages? If you're making them digitally you should be able to edit the size in that program.
For instance: photoshop or manga studio.

[EmeeEms]

I draw the pages with a tablet and Manga Studio. I first thought to use "change image resolution" to scale them down.

I guess I'm just unsure if they're scaled down enough (what is acceptable. The help section comic made it seem as though anything in the hundreds like 150 or something like that is too much).

[Strontium]

You're on the right path!

On Tapastic, the maximum size of a file is 940x2000 pixels. If you're not making a vertical scroll comic, the first number is most important since it dictates the maximum width of a single page. The width can be any number smaller than that, although I wouldn't go below 700 - you want to keep the text readable.

In CSP, use the change image resolution tool as you are. If you're using a template with pixels as the default measurement, just type "940" in the width box and the height will automatically downsize. If you're using inches instead of pixels, go find a pixel to inch calculator and use whatever number it gives you.
I'd also reccomend saving the resized comic page separately from the full size, full layer file. In case you need to change things or you need a different size, you don't want to save over your work!

[EmeeEms]

Oh okay. All of my pages are basically 729x1032 (and horizontal is the opposite and it does say that it's too big so I have to fix those). I was so worried about the file size because the pixels sound okay but the kb seemed too big; I'd scale it down so the kb was lower but the pixels were lower (below 700). It sounds like things aren't too bad though. Thank you both for your help!

[Sieza]

Manga Studio 4 does the same thing to me. Even though I set the pages a certain size, it still doesn't cooperate with me. I use a converter to change my pages. The tough part about it is, is that I have to do this to every individual page. Just make sure your saving your work too because MS also tends to delete everything and change the formatting of the pages at random too. If you need me to link the converter, just let me know! Good luck!

[Strontium]

What might help is if you can "flatten" the file. I use photoshop to do this, it should reduce the file size. Paint tool SAI can do this too. I haven't figured out how to do it in CSP though.

[Vanesalisa]

never like that part

[SpectreFirst]

Hm-m-m, what looked like a pretty straightforward question actually turned out to be a quite interesting research. There are actually many different ways to reduce the file size and it's very dependent on which file format you use and for what purpose. My guess is that you are trying to reduce the file size for .PNG or .JPG file for posting your comic page so it should be a pretty straightforward process.

In general, when you save .PNG files they have a compression option that lets you reduce the file size without losing quality (as PNG compression is lossless by default) and there are plenty of programs that can reduce .PNG even further by removing some extra data from it – for example, it looks like that PNGOUT plug-in is quite widespread and can be used within several different programs like XNView or IrfanView. By the way, both of these programs can batch convert images so even if there are several files to convert, it shouldn’t be a problem.

If you are going to use .JPG format as an output, there are also several options you can fiddle with and besides the usual “Optimize” and "Quality" options it looks like you can also choose different sub-sampling methods where some can yield smaller file but with more compression artifacts while other methods can yield bigger file with less artifacts. I think it’s up to you to find out which options are available in your software, whether you want to use additional programs or not and which options will give you best results.

If your question was about using other formats for other purposes like storing your working files, it all depends on the format itself and the general usage of that file – you can flatten unnecessary layers, use formats that can compress data and so on, but again, it’s pretty much up to you to find out the best possible solution for your working pipeline.

And by the way, resizing the image, while being the most obvious solution, also has a couple of things to keep track of: since there are various algorithms for upscaling and downscaling, in some cases it makes sense to fiddle with options and see which one has the best output. As far as I can see, most people seem to agree that Lanczos yields best results in most standard cases, but different programs can have different resampling algorithms so it’s hard to tell which one is the best one.
And the last but not least – I’ve heard that some people prefer to add text bubbles after the page was resized to its output size so text won’t be affected by compression and downscaling algorithms.