Comics Formatting FAQ

[Josef Komenda]

A number of artists have been asking about full-bleed interiors, preferred DPI settings, and the like. I'm posting this FAQ as a sticky to answer some of the common questions we've seen in this forum. As more accumulate, I'll edit this FAQ. Please feel free to post questions here if you need clarification.

Full-Bleed Interiors
If your art is on a solid background and you want it to go all the way to the edge of the page, this is known as full-bleed. However, our converters size content to the exact cutting dimension, so there will often be a thin sliver of white. To get full-bleed:
1. Upload your comic as a single pdf*.
2. Have .25 (quarter inch) bleed on the leading (or outside) edge.
3. Have .125 (one eighth) bleed on the top and bottom. (Total .25, quarter inch)
Final dimensions for the pdf you upload (comic book size) would therefore be 6.875" x 10.5". At 300 dpi you would add 75 pixels to leading edge and 37 or 38 pixels to the top and bottom.

For 8.5x11, you would do the same - add .25 to the leading edge and .125 top and bottom. At 300 dpi that means you would add 75 pixels to leading edge and 37 or 38 pixels to the top and bottom. Final PDF size would be 8.75x11.25 inches, or 2625x3375.

For 6x9, at 300 DPI, final size would be 6.25x9.25 inches, or 1875x2275.

Bear in mind that anything within this area is likely to be cut off, so don't have any critical artwork within 1/2 inch of the edges.

Preferred DPI Settings
We've done testing of print quality at various resolutions, and feel that 300 DPI is the optimal resolution. 600 DPI is our limit at this time, but the difference in quality is not noticeable, and the file size is huge. Therefore, for comic size, the image size should be:
- 1987x3075 pixels, or 2062x3150 pixels for full bleed. This adds
75 pixels to the leading edge, and 37 or 38 pixels to the top and bottom.

Greyscale?
We've had people report that when you save your Photoshop files for printing in a black and white book, saving in greyscale causes them to pixelate upon printing. We therefore recommend saving in 300 DPI RGB mode. That's right, even if your comic is black and white, set the color mode to RBG. Note: If you are an advanced Photoshop user, read this:
http://www.lulu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=228475#228475
Many thanks to Ken for that awesome post!

Display Size
When you publish a full-bleed PDF, the size that shows up on the site will round up, so a 6.625x10.25 book using a 6.875x10.5 source pdf will show as 6.9x10.5. Don't worry about it, it'll print as 6.625x10.25 and trim the bleeds correctly. This is a (very) low-priority bug.

Regards,
Joe Komenda
Lulu QA Geek

* yes, it has to be one PDF or else it will not bypass our converter. You'll need Adobe Acrobat for this, you can get an older version (5) on Ebay for less than $100. Other converters have a 'join' function that groups files together.

[Mack Taylor]

Ya know, the only reason I came to Lulu was to puplish my stuff, right? Well, I noticed that you guys don't have the right size for my book. I am making Manga, a japanese comic book and the muesurements for that is about 4.5" x 7.5". Is, like, a custom size thingie or something?

[Josef Komenda]

We've hit several bookstores, anime sites, and manga sites, and there doesn't seem to be a 'standard' size for manga. We've seen evrything from 4.5 x 7.5, 5x8 to 6x9. The proportions are all pretty close, so we're calling our 6x9 'Manga Size'.

We have several published here already: http://www.lulu.com/category/601

Feel free to start a manga thread and see if we can get a shout out from some of the folks. Smile

Regards,
Joe K

[Chris Scott]

And of course, some manga from back in the days when everything wasn't so small was still printed at standard issue comic size (6.5x10.25 I think). It really depends. Most companies just go smaller to conserve costs.

[Sylvan Migdal]

[Elmore Hammes]

[Sylvan Migdal]

Okay, so right on page 1, left on page 2, etc.? That's what I figured, but better to ask. Thanks!

[Joel Danford]

I converted my grayscale images to RGB. I got my book yesterday, but the GS stills looks pixelated. The images are in 300 DPI, this is my first time going trhough Lulu. So should I try the files in actual grayscale and reload them?

[Cammi Melendez]

I've actually found a way to make all the pages a single PDF document without having to purchase any adobe software.

I use CutePDF for the conversions, and how i do this (i use Windows XP so I'm not sure if this works with other versions), is that I save all my pages in a folder (named in an orderly fashion, of course), and open that folder in explorer, highlight all the pages and right-click for the print command. The wizard will pop up with a thumbnailed checklist of all the pages you want to print and how you want them formatted on the page, and it'll 'print' as a multiple-page PDF.

I'm not sure if this is commonly known now, but i wanted to mention this just in case not.

[Erin Kearney]

So I downloaded the comic template which was a Microsoft Word document. So I'm not quite sure, you paste the comic page onto the Word page and convert that to PDF? Or am I not understanding something? I'm very new here so...