GUIDE: Converting CBR files to PDF format
As the title indicates, this will be a guide on converting .cbr files to PDF format. This guide assumes you understand how to work with archive files, as well as understand what a file extension is.
A quick rundown on the CBR format, copied from its wikipedia page;
Quote:
A comic book archive or comic book reader file is a type of archive file for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, especially comic books. The idea was made popular by the CDisplay image viewer; since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.
Essentially, this is an archive format designed to be easy to create from a set of image files (page scans, etc) and loaded in "reader" programs designed for ease of use. The main problem I have encountered attempting to use this format is that, on lower end computers, it can take a long time to load say, a 200 page strategy guide (performance varies slightly between readers). The purpose of this tutorial is to help users in a similar position convert any .cbr files they've downloaded into the PDF format, which will load MUCH faster on older computers.
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NOTE: Types of Comic Book Archive files
The first thing to keep in mind is that these files can come in several different file extensions, each of which indicate what actual archive file format the file uses. These are the different file extensions you may encounter;
.CBR <-- These use the .rar file archive format
.CBZ <-- These use the standard .zip file archive format
.CB7 <-- These use the .7z file archive format
.CBT <-- These use the .tar file archive format
.CBA <-- These use the .ace file archive format
As far as converting these to PDF format is concerned, you'll need an appropriate file archiver program to handle whichever of these you're working with. With the exception of the ACE format, all of these should be handled by 7zip, which can be found here; http://www.7-zip.org/download.html (note 7zip is NOT required if you already have an appropriate program for handling these formats).
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With that out of the way, the actual conversion process is quite simple.
1. Rename the file you wish to convert according to it's extension. For example, if you've downloaded a file called "strategyguide.cbr", you'll need to rename it to "strategyguide.rar", going off the list in the previous section.
2. Extract the newly renamed archive file to a separate folder. You should get a folder with each page of the document separated into individual image files (.jpg, .png, etc).
3. Download JPEGtoPDF, the program we will be using to recombine the separate pages into a single PDF file. You can find the program here; http://www.compulsivecode.com/project_imagetopdf.aspx . Simply extract the .zip file and run the program.
4. Once you have the program open, click the "Add Files" button near the lower left corner. Browse to the folder you extracted your comic archive to earlier, select all of the image files (starting with the first and going to the last to ensure they're loaded in the proper order) and click "Open".
5. Near the upper right corner you'll see "Output PDF Files". Here you can specify a filename for your new PDF as well as change where it will be placed once completed (default is your Desktop).
6. Finally, click "Save PDF" near the bottom right corner to create your new PDF file.
