plasq.com - Comic Life MAC PAQ

Comic Life MAC PAQ

(Pre-emptively Answered Questions)

Q. Why aren't my iPhoto pictures and albums showing up?
A. Comic Life relies on a special file for finding your iPhoto data. This file is maintained by iPhoto and can occasionally become out of date. iPhoto 5 has a mechanism that allows you to rebuild its database and bring this file up to date - which will then allow Comic Life to access the photos.
The information on rebuilding the database can be found here.

Q. Why does Comic Life freeze on launch?
A. There are two possible causes for this:

A1. Comic Life checks for newer versions on launch and if the computer is connected to a network but not the Internet it will pause for a few minutes until the attempt to connect times out and returns. You can disable the check in the Preferences to prevent this from happening every time you start Comic Life.

A2. Comic Life thinks there is a video capture device connected when there isn't. It tries to grab a video frame and freezes because there's nothing to grab. This is caused a particular QuickTime component called "Scalar Microscope USB Component" in the /Library/Components folder. Removing this component should allow Comic Life to start up as expected.

Q. Is there a printable manual?
A. Yes! Go into the Comic Life help menu and choose Comic Life Help (Command-?). You should now see a help window. In the side bar, there is a 'Printable manual' option. Choose this option, then click File (near the top of the screen) then choose Print.
A2. If you would like a PDF of this manual, using OS X's build in PDF export, you can create one doing the above answer but choose 'Save as PDF' on the print dialog.
A3. Alternatively, you can download the English manual from here (.pdf - 2.3MB).

Q. My text butts into the balloon border which doesn't look as good as it could.
A. Try adding a few CR's (RETURN KEY) after some words, to force the bubble to reformat.

Q. I put a picture in a Panel, but now I want to move picture around a bit, how do i do that?
A. Double click on the panel, and you will be able to change the size and the rotation (and clipping) of the image in the panel. Make sure you click outside the panel to deselect the image

Q. The speech balloons always seem to go over the edge of the panel. Is there a way to keep them inside the frame?
A. Yes. Select the balloon, and go to Arrange Menu, and select 'clip'.

Q. I find myself doing lots of repetitive things, like copying the whole comic and then deleting all the pictures to use the same frame layout.
A. You can use the Actions menu button at the bottom of the page viewer (next to the '-') to select common tasks.

OR

Setup the page how you want, then choose "Page" menu, "Save as Template". You can then choose it in the templates chooser.

Q. How do I **flip** a balloon so the pointy bit faces the other way?
A. You don't. Please hover the cursor over the balloons tail until a blue dot appears. Click and drag the blue dot. This lets you move the tail anywhere.

Q. What format does export to iPhoto use?
A. 300dpi TIFF with LZW compression. This is a lossless format chosen to retain your comics image quality. Export to image(s) also uses LZW compression but you can define DPI.

Q. I wish there were some arrows, stars and other handy stuff I could use in my comic!
A. There IS! There are many great built-in symbols in the fonts included in Mac OS X. Here's how to use them:

1. Go to system Preferences, select the 'International' control (under Personal)
2. In the 'Input Menu' tab makes sure Character Palette is checked.
3. You should have a little flag next to the time in your menu bar..
4. Click on it and select 'Show Character Palette"
5. Drag some Special Effects Text ("POW") into your comic. The input box appears.
6. You can now drag a symbol from the character palette to the text input box!

This gives you access to hearts, arrows, office symbols etc., even the pirate sign!

Q. When I make text (or a character) really big with Special Effects Text, it gets all jagged and ugly looking. help!
A. Double click your word/ symbol, then select 'Change Font' - Make sure your original font is quite large (64 etc) - this will reduce the amount of squiggle.

Q. How do I do PAGE NUMBERS?
A. Select your initial page, and then open the attributes tab. Check Page Numbers on, and then create a new style.

A. We are indeed looking into this.

Q. How do I get diacritical accents like Umlauts?
A. The default font, 'DigitalStrip' does not support this. However, there is a free font available online called 'komika' which you can download. Install this into /Library/Fonts/ (or your home font folder ~/Library/Fonts/ ) and use the 'plasq-komika' stylesheet found in Comic Life's preferences. Download komika

Q. What is your upgrade policy?
A. Comic Life 1.x versions will be free to owners. When 2.0 is released (no idea when this will be though), there will be an upgrade fee for 1.x owners - they will not have to buy it all over again.

Q. I want more fonts!
A. OK, check out: comicbookfonts.com , Larabiefonts , misc fonts at DaFONT , Blambot and you can always search google .

Q. Is there a limit to how many pages I can put in a document?
A. No, no internal limit. Just limited by your computers hardware.

Q1. What does 'WYSIWYG image filtering' under Comic Life's preferences mean?
Q2. When I export my comics that have image filtering applied, why do they look pixelated?
A. When 'WYSIWYG image filtering' option is turned on it preserves what you see when you apply the effects with Comic Life - in other words, it is What You See Is What You Get when you export your comic. It keeps your filtered images at a 72 dpi regardless of your export settings that you have applied. This is why at the larger dpi export settings your normal photos will look fine, but the photos with filters will look pixelated. Remove the tick if you do not want the pixelation. Please note: removing the tick will cause the filter to look less pronounced.

Q. Where can I get my masterpiece of a comic printed?
A. There are numerous places you can get your comic printed; your local printer, FedEx Kinko's, and online services. While we place no guarantee on these services, some of our customers have reported great quality results with online printers like Kodak printing services (which is built into iPhoto) and ComiXpress.

Q1. I just tried to open Comic Life again, and it won't open - any ideas?
Q2. I have just registered and upgraded to Deluxe but I only have the default styles, fonts and templates - what gives?
Q3. Why all of a sudden am I experiencing slow performance with long wait times before another action can be done?
Q4. I just loaded Comic Life to create something awesome, but all my styles and fonts are gone - what's the deal dudes?
Q5. I just want to create comics man! Why am I having difficulty making color changes to panels, balloons and fonts?
A. In some rare circumstances the preferences file can become corrupted; this may be the problem.

Try trashing this file (you will need to reset your Comic Life preferences).
1. Make sure you are not running Comic Life
2. Find the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.plasq.ComicLife.plist
(~ is the users directory)

10.4 users can just search (using Spotlight) for com.plasq.ComicLife.plist
Use show all

3. Then drag the file that is shown to the trash
4. Restart comic life.

Q. I have some old comics (they use .comic extension) that I created using a PowerPC Mac. When opening the files on my new Intel-based Mac, the thumbnails appear in the Page organizer, but nothing appears in the main panel or when I export or print.
A. Congratulations on your new shiny Mac! There was basically an Intel/PPC compatibility bug for comics with lettering or irregular panels that affected comics created before Comic Life 1.3 was released.

This has however been fixed - so please make sure you have the latest version of Comic Life (1.4+).

Then:

Make sure Comic Life is closed.
Using Finder, find and holding down the "control" button on your keyboard, select Comic Life.
Then click 'Get Info' in the pop-up Finder window and check "Open in Rosetta".
Then launch Comic Life and open the comic - it'll open fine (just run a bit slower)
This will force Comic Life to use Rosetta and enable you too open the PPC file.
Once your file has opened, please use Save As and create a new .comicdoc file with a new name, and quit Comic Life and remove the tick from "Open in Rosetta" (steps 1 - 2)

The above will only work if going from PPC-based Mac's to Intel-based Mac's.

Doing this will make the file portable to any other 1.4+ Comic Life (including your new totally awesome Intel machine).

See also, the manual within the app via the help menu