Cleaning up scans for a .CBZ file using Photoshop

CBZ is a standard file format used for distributing comics. The file format itself is quite simple, it's just a .ZIP file full of sequentially-numbered images (usually .JPG).

Here are some tips for how to take scanned comic art and clean it up for inclusion in a CBZ collection, using Photoshop.

Step 1 Scan

Comics are usually printed using a "Halftone" process. The image consists of different sizes of dots of the four process colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). From a distance, they look like different hues and shades. (This is different than pixels, which are all the same size and have different brightnesses of the color components).

When scanning, I like to scan at a high enough resolution that I can see individual halftone dots, so I know I'm not losing too much detail. For the project I'm working on, that means scanning at 600dpi. Later, we'll resize the image so that those dots join together into areas of smooth color, but we want the starting artwork to be sharp.

It's sometimes tricky to get the pages to lie flat without taking apart the source. I've been using a flat clipboard and a scanner that I can place on top of the original.