Filename extension | .cbr, .cbz, .cbt, .cba, .cb7 (containers) |
---|---|
Internet media type | application/vnd.comicbook+zip [.cbz only], application/vnd.comicbook-rar [.cbr only] |
Type of format | Multimedia, archive file |
Container for | Images |
Standard | None |
A comic book archive or comic book reader file (also called sequential image file) is a type of archive file for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, commonly for comic books. The idea was made popular by the CDisplay sequential image viewer; [1] since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.
Comic book archive is not a distinct file format. It is a filename extension naming convention.
The filename extension indicates the archive type used:
Comic book archive files mainly consist of a series of image files with specific naming, typically PNG (lossless compression) or JPEG (lossy compression, not JPEG-LS or JPEG XT) files, stored as a single archive file. Occasionally GIF, BMP, and TIFF files are seen. Folders may be used to group images in a more logical layout within the archive, like book chapters.
Comic book archive viewers typically offer various dedicated functions to read the content, like one page forward/backwards, go to first/last page, zoom or print. Some applications support additional tag information in the form of embedded XML files in the archive or use of the ZIP comment to store additional information. [4] These files can include additional information like artists, story information, table of contents or even a separate text layer for comic book translations. [5]
JPEG 2000 (JP2) is an image compression standard and coding system. It was developed from 1997 to 2000 by a Joint Photographic Experts Group committee chaired by Touradj Ebrahimi, with the intention of superseding their original JPEG standard, which is based on a discrete cosine transform (DCT), with a newly designed, wavelet-based method. The standardized filename extension is .jp2 for ISO/IEC 15444-1 conforming files and .jpx for the extended part-2 specifications, published as ISO/IEC 15444-2. The registered MIME types are defined in RFC 3745. For ISO/IEC 15444-1 it is image/jp2.
Tag Image File Format or Tagged Image File Format, commonly known by the abbreviations TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition, image manipulation, desktop publishing, and page-layout applications. The format was created by the Aldus Corporation for use in desktop publishing. It published the latest version 6.0 in 1992, subsequently updated with an Adobe Systems copyright after the latter acquired Aldus in 1994. Several Aldus or Adobe technical notes have been published with minor extensions to the format, and several specifications have been based on TIFF 6.0, including TIFF/EP, TIFF/IT, TIFF-F and TIFF-FX.
DjVu is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned documents, especially those containing a combination of text, line drawings, indexed color images, and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy compression for bitonal (monochrome) images. This allows high-quality, readable images to be stored in a minimum of space, so that they can be made available on the web.
IrfanView is an image viewer, editor, organiser and converter program for Microsoft Windows. It can also play video and audio files, and has some image creation and painting capabilities. IrfanView is free for non-commercial use; commercial use requires paid registration. It is noted for its small size, speed, ease of use, and ability to handle a wide variety of graphic file formats. It was first released in 1996.
An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be compressed or uncompressed. If the data is compressed, it may be done so using lossy compression or lossless compression. For graphic design applications, vector formats are often used. Some image file formats support transparency.
XnView is an image organizer and general-purpose file manager used for viewing, converting, organizing and editing raster images, as well as general purpose file management. It comes with built-in hex inspection, batch renaming, image scanning and screen capture tools. It is licensed as freeware for private, educational and non-profit uses. For other uses, it is licensed as commercial software.
MrSID is an acronym that stands for multiresolution seamless image database. It is a file format developed and patented by LizardTech for encoding of georeferenced raster graphics, such as orthophotos.
A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed, and contain large amounts of potentially redundant data. Normally, the image is processed by a raw converter, in a wide-gamut internal color space where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to a viewable file format such as JPEG or PNG for storage, printing, or further manipulation. There are dozens of raw formats in use by different manufacturers of digital image capture equipment.
CDisplay is a freeware comic book archive viewer and sequential image viewer utility for Microsoft Windows used to view images one at a time in the style of a comic book. It popularized the comic book archive file format. CDisplay was written to easily view JPEG, PNG and static GIF format images sequentially. The program was designed to be less general purpose than existing image viewer programs, and more convenient for simply viewing images sequentially.
FictionBook is an open XML-based e-book format which originated and gained popularity in Russia. FictionBook files have the .fb2 or .fb3 filename extension, regarding to their version. All FB2/FB3 capable readers also support ZIP-compressed FictionBook files . FictionBook2 and FictionBook3 differ in two respects: FB2 consists of a single XML file, with pictures being embedded as base64-encoded "binary" blocks, thus removing the need for additional files. FB3 has a directory structure similar to that of the ePub format and incorporates the layout and embedding of multimedia content.
Tag Image File Format/Electronic Photography (TIFF/EP) is a digital image file format standard – ISO 12234-2, titled "Electronic still-picture imaging – Removable memory – Part 2: TIFF/EP image data format". This is different from the Tag Image File Format, which is a standard administered by Adobe currently called "TIFF, Revision 6.0 Final – June 3, 1992".
Sumatra PDF is a free and open-source document viewer that supports many document formats including: Portable Document Format (PDF), Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (CHM), DjVu, EPUB, FictionBook (FB2), MOBI, PRC, Open XML Paper Specification, and Comic Book Archive file. If Ghostscript is installed, it supports PostScript files. It is developed exclusively for Microsoft Windows.
The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.
STDU Viewer is computer software, a compact viewer for many computer file formats: Portable Document Format (PDF), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), DjVu, comic book archive, FB2, ePUB, XML Paper Specification (XPS), Text Compression for Reader (TCR), Mobipocket (MOBI), AZW, multi-page TIFF, text file (TXT), PalmDoc (PDB), Windows Metafile (EMF), Windows Metafile (WMF), bitmap (BMP), Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), JPEG-JPG, Portable Network Graphics (PNG), Photoshop Document (PSD), PiCture eXchange (PCX-DCX). It works under Microsoft Windows, and is free for non-commercial use.
WebP is a raster graphics file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency.
GonVisor is a freeware sequential image viewer utility for Microsoft Windows used mainly to view digital images in the style of a comic book, manga or magazine. It has some additional features to create and manage archives and also to enhance the images.
FBReader is an e-book reader for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Android, and other platforms.
JPEG XL is a royalty-free open standard for the compressed representation of raster graphics images. It defines a graphics file format and the abstract device for coding JPEG XL bitstreams. It is developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) and standardized by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as the international standard ISO/IEC 18181. As a superset of JPEG/JFIF encoding, with a compression mode built on a traditional block-based transform coding core and a "modular mode" for synthetic image content and lossless compression. Optional lossy quantization enables both lossless and lossy compression.
Plucker is an open-source offline e-reader for PDAs, and the associated Plucker file format. The Plucker software suite includes a supporting desktop application for creating Plucker files and transferring them to supported devices.