SmartStitch

A small yet powerful program for stitching and cutting webtoons/manhwa/manhua raws.

GUI Version supports most versions of Windows, Console Version should work on any platform with Python Installed on it.

It's free, but any donation is appreciated

A small yet powerful program for stitching together webtoons/manhwa/manhua raws then slicing them down to the whatever size you wish for.

The smart part of the name comes from the fact that it uses some simple pixel calculation to stop itself from cutting/slicing through sfx or speech or drawings. it making life much easier for the team working on those raw images. [Both CLRD and TS will thank you a lot].

It's not fancy, and does not use AI, but it's fast, robust, simple and more importantly works for me. (So i decided to share it with you!)

1. Open the application.
2. Browse to your raw folder.
3. Select a the output file type. (Supported types: png, jpg, webp, bmp, psd, tiff, tga)
4. Set the Rough Panel Height of the output files.
5. Click start process.
6. Done, Enjoy!

• Your file will be ordered the same way they are in your file explorer, so make sure everything is in order. (sort by name in file explorer)
• You can explore the advanced settings after reading documentation to have more control on the output files.

1. Put the raws you wish to stitch in a folder
2. Download the program zip file of the latest release (Found in the releases section in this github)
3. Unzip the file to a suitable place on your device.
4. Now the application will launch, and you can proceed with the Quick get started steps.

1. Download the source code zip file of the latest release (Found in the releases section in this github)
2. Unzip the file to a suitable place on your device.
3. Install python edition suitable for your machine. (Python 3.10+ is required)
4. Run the setup.py either by double clicking it or using the terminal python setup.py
5. Run the SmartStitchGUI.py either by double clicking it or using the terminal: python SmartStitchGUI.py
6. Now the application will launch, and you can proceed with the Quick get started steps.

Keep in mind that this setup is only needed once, after running the setup.py, you can just launch SmartStitchGUI.py directly every time

A very robust logging system has been implemented in the GUI version of SmartStitch for almost every interaction with the program, when an error occur the application will inform you about it, and leaves the details in a file called in the __logs__ folder, There will be a file created for every day of usage. you can open an issue ticket here and attach the file, so it can be easily debugged and fixed.

And since it's just one person maintaining this application, only accepted tickets will be for version 3.0 and above. Please don't open tickets for lower versions, since your problem could have been already solved.

Please keep in mind that, if the issue is critical enough, it may require a copy of the raws files you used as input, but that will be for debugging special case issue, and will be requested if required.

You can also contact me at Discord if you don't want to use the GitHub Issue System. (MechTechnology#5466)

Here is the complete documentation for the application, it is broken down into 4 sections, basic settings, advanced settings, how to build your own version, how to run the console version.

These are the required settings that all users should be mindful of.

Here you have to set the path for the Input Folder which contains the raws that will be processed by the program. If batch mode is enabled, it will search for subfolder within the given input path. So make sure your folder and files are in order.

Console Parameter Name: --input_folder, -i

The default output type is png since it is lossless, however you can always change to other types, such as jpg, the program does save jpg at 100 quality, so there should be not noticeable loss in quality but it is up to the user what format they want. (You can also now use PSD files for convenience if you are a Photoshop user, however output files will not contain the layers of the original input psd file)

Default: .png --- Supported Types: png, jpg, webp, bmp, psd, tiff, tga --- Console Parameter Name: -t

Here you set the size that you want most output panels to roughly be, the program will uses it as a guide to see where to slice/cut the images, however it IS ROUGH, meaning if the program finds bubbles/sfx/whatever at that specific pixel length, it will try to find the next closest position where it can cut the image. Thus the output size of each image will vary because of that, but they all will be roughly around this size.

Default: 5000 --- Console Parameter Name: -sh

So essentially it's very straightforward. It adds a setting to select one of three modes to enforce change on the image width. 0 => No Enforcement, where you load the files as is, and work on them, if they vary in size, you will get some black lines in the side (Highest quality as there is no changes to the pixel values) 1 => Automatic uniform width, where you force all files to have the same width as the smallest file in the input folder. 2 => User Customized width, where the user specifies the width they want, that is the Custom Width parameter. (Please just use waifu2x for upscaling raws, do not use this mode for it.)

Default: 0 --- Value Range: 0-2 Default: 720 --- Console Parameter Name: -cw

Console only support custom width or no enforcement

You can have multiple chapter folders in the input folder. The program will automatically search the nested tree, and treat every folder within the input folder as its own chapter and will work on them. It will skip folders with no images.

These are settings for more tech savvy people, or people that find themselves in a special case that need some fine tuning of the settings.

Detector type is a very simple setting, currently there is a smart pixel comparison detector which is the default way of edge detection in this program, and there is Direct Slicing, which cuts all panels to the exact size that the user inputs in the rough panel height field.

*Default: Smart Pixel Comparison, Console Parameter Name: -dt

Before slicing at a specific height, the program checks the row of pixels it will slice at if there is bubbles/sfx/whatever, it compares neighbouring pixels for any drastic jump in value, (the allowed tolarence for jumps in pixel is the Object Detection Senstivity)

if there is too big of a jump in value between the pixels, that means there is something that shouldn't be cut, so it move up a pixel row and repeat. For 100 Senstivity will mean if entire pixel row does not have the same exact pixel value/color, it will not slice at it. For 0 Senstivity being it does not care about the pixel values and will cut there, essentially turning the program into a normal Dumb Image Slicer.

Default: 90 --- Value Range: 0-100 --- Console Parameter Name: -s

This is the step at which the program moves if it find the line it's on to be unsuitable to be sliced, meaning when it move on to the next line, it moves up/down X number of pixels to a new line, then it begins its scan algorithm once again. This X number of pixels is the scan line step. Smaller steps should give better results but larger ones do save computational power.

Default: 5 --- Value Range: 1-100 --- Console Parameter Name: -sl

This gives the option to ignore pixels on the border of the image when checking for bubbles/sfw/whatever. Why you might ask, Borders do not make the detection algorithm happy, so in some cases you want it to start its detection only inside said border, be careful to what value you want it to be since if it's larger that image it will case the program to crash/stop its operation.

Default: 0 --- Console Parameter Name: -ip

Red being the area ignored because of the Ignorable Border Pixels, and the blue lines would be the lines that application test for where it can slice (This example does not use the default values for those parameters)

For those working on various projects that require different stitching settings for each of them, you can now have multiple settings profile, that you can create and name as you like. Selecting the profile from dropdown will update all the programming settings to that of selected profile, this can for example be very useful when working with manhwas and manhuas of different resolutions.

This is setting is for convenience mainly for heavy users.

(GUI Only) With this option, one can set a specific console process to be fire on the output files of the application. For example, you can set it to fire waifu2x on the output files, so you can have the best raw processing experience. So how do we set that up,

1. Navigate to the Post Process Tab
2. Enable the run postprocess after completion flag.
3. Set the process path/location, you can essentially browse to the process' exe file
4. Set the arguments you want to pass to the process (Use the argument [stitched] to pass the output directory to your process).
5. Optional: Use the argument [processed] to pass a custom output directory to your process for those that can't create their own output.

Of course you can use whatever version of waifu2x or process that you want, this is just an example of what i setup for myself.

1. Download the source code zip file of the latest release (Found in the releases section in this github)
2. Unzip the file to a suitable place on your device.
3. Install python edition suitable for your machine. (Python 3.7 is recommended)
4. Open a terminal and send the following command: pip install numpy pillow natsort
5. From the terminal, navigate to the directory where the source code was unzipped and run the command as per the usage details below

python SmartStitchConsole.py [-h] -i INPUT_FOLDER
                                  -sh SPLIT_HEIGHT
                                  [-t {.png,.jpg,.webp,.bmp,.psd,.tiff,.tga}]
                                  [-cw CUSTOM_WIDTH]
                                  [-dt {none,pixel}]
                                  [-s [0-100]]
                                  [-lq [1-100]]
                                  [-ip IGNORABLE_PIXELS]
                                  [-sl [1-100]]
required arguments:
    --input_folder INPUT_FOLDER, -i INPUT_FOLDER               Sets the path of Input Folder
optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i INPUT_FOLDER       Sets the path of Input Folder
  -sh SPLIT_HEIGHT      Sets the value of the Rough Panel Height
  -t {.png,.jpg,.webp,.bmp,.psd,.tiff,.tga}
                        Sets the type/format of the Output Image Files
  -cw CUSTOM_WIDTH      [Advanced] Forces Fixed Width for All Output Image Files, Default=None (Disabled)
  -dt {none,pixel}      [Advanced] Sets the type of Slice Location Detection, Default=pixel (Pixel Comparison)
  -s [0-100]            [Advanced] Sets the Object Detection Senstivity Percentage, Default=90 (10 percent tolerance)
  -lq [1-100]           [Advanced] Sets the quality of lossy file types like .jpg if used, Default=100 (100 percent)
  -ip IGNORABLE_PIXELS  [Advanced] Sets the value of Ignorable Border Pixels, Default=5 (5px)
  -sl [1-100]           [Advanced] Sets the value of Scan Line Step, Default=5 (5px)

python SmartStitchConsole.py -i "Review me" -sh 7500 -t ".png"
# This will Run the application on for input_folder of "./Review me" with split_height of 7500 and output_type of ".png"

1. Install python edition suitable for your machine. (Python 3.10+ is required)
2. Run the setup.py either by double clicking it or using the terminal python setup.py
3. From the terminal, navigate to the directory where the source code was unzipped and run: pipenv run build

1. Install python edition suitable for your machine. (Python 3.10+ is required)
2. Run the setup.py either by double clicking it or using the terminal python setup.py
3. From the terminal, navigate to the directory where the source code was unzipped and run: pipenv run build-no-icon

• The output compiled application will not need python installed to run, but will only run on the platform it was built/compiled on.
• Mac and Linux Compiling was not tested by me, so uh... good luck xD