A comic book archive or comic book reader file (also called sequential image file) is a type of

archive file In computing, an archive file is a computer file that is composed of one or more files along with metadata. Archive files are used to collect multiple data files together into a single file for easier portability and storage, or simply to compre ...

for the purpose of sequential viewing of images, commonly for

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. ...

s. The idea was made popular by the

CDisplay 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 writte ...

sequential image viewer; since then, many viewers for different platforms have been created.

Design

Comic book archive is not a distinct file format. It is a

filename extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically ...

naming convention. The filename extension indicates the archive type used: * .cb7 → 7z * .cba → ACE * .cbr →

RAR RAR or Rar may refer to: * Radio acoustic ranging, a non-visual technique for determining a ship's position at sea * "rar", the ISO 639-2 code for the Cook Islands Māori language * RAR (file format), a proprietary compressed archive file format in ...

* .cbt →

TAR Tar is a dark brown or black viscosity, viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon, obtained from a wide variety of organic matter, organic materials through destructive distillation. Tar can be produced from coal, wood, petroleum, or peat. ...

* .cbz →

ZIP Zip, Zips or ZIP may refer to: Common uses * ZIP Code, USPS postal code * Zipper or zip, clothing fastener Science and technology Computing * ZIP (file format), a compressed archive file format ** zip, a command-line program from Info-ZIP * Zi ...

Comic book archive files mainly consist of a series of

image file 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 ...

s with specific naming, typically PNG (

lossless compression Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistic ...

) or

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and im ...

(

lossy compression In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...

, not JPEG-LS or JPEG XT) files, stored as a single

. Occasionally GIF, BMP, and

TIFF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated 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 processin ...

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. These files can include additional information like artists, story information, table of contents or even a separate text layer for comic book translations.

Adoption

Windows

* Calibre e-book reader can view and convert comic archives to different formats *

was the first application to support the CBR format. * CDisplayEx, inspired by

with additional viewing features. * Comic Seer (Desktop) is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop. * Gonvisor is a comic reader simple to use with some features to improve image quality. *

STDU Viewer 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 (CBR or CBZ), FB2, ePUB, XML Paper Specification (XPS), Text Compr ...

* SumatraPDF

Mac

* Calibre can view, library manage and convert to different formats.

Android

FBReader FBReader is an e-book reader for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Android, and other platforms. It was originally written for the Sharp Zaurus and currently runs on many other mobile devices, like the Nokia Internet Tablets, as well as desktop com ...

supports CBZ/CBR files on Android via the ComicBook plugin available from its website. * Tachiyomi, a

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is use ...

reader, supports CBZ/CBR files, but does not support CBR files using the RAR5 format.

Unix-like

* Calibre can view and convert to different formats. * Comic Seer (Desktop) is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop. *

Evince Evince (), also known as GNOME Document Viewer, is a free and open source document viewer supporting many document file formats including PDF, PostScript, DjVu, TIFF, XPS and DVI. It is designed for the GNOME desktop environment. The de ...

, a document viewer, includes support for the format. *

Okular Okular is a multiplatform document viewer developed by the KDE community and based on Qt and KDE Frameworks libraries. It is distributed as part of the KDE Applications bundle. Its origins are from KPDF and it replaces KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, ...

can view many formats, including PDF and CBR, and is included in the

KDE Software Compilation The KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) was an umbrella term for the desktop environment plus a range of included applications produced by KDE. From its 1.0 release in July 1998 until the release of version 4.4 in February 2010, the Software Com ...

. * MuPDF is a cross-platform lightweight PDF, XPS, and E-book viewer. *

Zathura ''Zathura'' is a 2002 science fiction children's picture book written and illustrated by American author Chris Van Allsburg. In the story, two boys are drawn into an intergalactic space adventure when their house is magically hurled through s ...

supports this format (as well as PDF, PostScript and others).

References

External links

* {{Ebooks Computer file formats Ebooks Comics formats