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 compress ...

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 panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

s. The idea was made popular by the CDisplay 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 d ...

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

ACE An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the c ...

* .cbr → RAR * .cbt →

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

* .cbz → ZIP 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 c ...

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 imag ...

(

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 Lossless JPEG is a 1993 addition to JPEG standard by the Joint Photographic Experts Group to enable lossless compression. However, the term may also be used to refer to all lossless compression schemes developed by the group, including JPEG 2000 an ...

JPEG XT JPEG XT (ISO/IEC 18477) is an image compression standard which specifies backward-compatible extensions of the base JPEG standard (ISO/IEC 10918-1 and ITU Rec. T.81). JPEG XT extends JPEG with support for higher integer bit depths, high dynami ...

) files, stored as a single

. Occasionally

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. ...

, 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 In guns, particularly firearms, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviated as "cal") is the specified nominal internal diameter of the gun barrel bore – regardless of how or where the bore is measured and whether the finished bore match ...

e-book reader can view and convert comic archives to different formats * CDisplay was the first application to support the CBR format. * CDisplayEx, inspired by CDisplay with additional viewing features. *

Comic Seer (Desktop) Comic Seer (Desktop) is a Freeware sequential image viewer application for Microsoft Windows and Linux used for viewing and reading Comic Book Archive files containing image formats, such as JPEG, PNG, and TIFF. Comic Seer is focused on the m ...

is a comic book archive viewer and organizer for the desktop. *

Gonvisor 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 ...

is a comic reader simple to use with some features to improve image quality. * STDU Viewer *

SumatraPDF 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 (Ope ...

Mac

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 comp ...

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 u ...

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

Unix-like

can view and convert to different formats. *

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 develo ...

, 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, K ...

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 Compi ...

. *

MuPDF MuPDF is a free and open-source software framework written in C that implements a PDF, XPS, and EPUB parsing and rendering engine. It is used primarily to render pages into bitmaps, but also provides support for other operations such as searchi ...

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

Zathura ''Zathura'' is a 2002 science fiction children's literature, 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 magic ...

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

References

External links

* {{Ebooks Computer file formats Ebooks Comics formats