Djvu miniguide - How to create djvu documents from multiple image files in Windows
Preamble
A while ago I wanted to create a single djvu file from some images I had lying around. I generally prefer having to deal with as few files as possible, as well as preserving user-friendliness, which means that zip-files weren't a good alternative. I had a hard time searching the net for guides on how to do this in windows (there were several good Linux-guides, though). Finding a free encoder wasn't too easy either, and Lizardtech's Document Express was way too expensive ($400-ish). After some searching I found Djvu Solo by Lizardtech, which is free for non-commercial use and no longer available from Lizardtech. For viewing djvu files, I recommend WinDjView.
Why djvu instead of pdf?
I personally prefer the djvu format over pdf for these reasons:
- The viewer (WinDjView) is much faster in use (both loading and navigating documents (the difference is much less now with the advent of pdf viewers like Sumatra)).
- Djvu files are usually much smaller than their pdf counterparts.
- Djvu documents do not contain a plethora of subformat and forced options that confuse the viewer each time different documents with certain settings (like single page layout) are opened.
- Djvu doesn't support DRM.
Prerequisites
Get Djvu solo v3.1 (link), and install it.
Steps
1. Open Djvu solo.
2. Prepare the images you want to convert by renaming each file, so that the images are in desired order when the filenames are in alphabetical order.
3. Select File -> Open from the menu, select file type, open the image you want to have as the first page in the document. A new document containing one image has been created.
4. There should be one thumbnail in the left partition of the subwindow. Click on it, select Edit -> Insert page(s) after from the menu, select file type (again), locate the last of the image files, left-click once to select it, locate the second image and left-click it while holding the shift key. It's important to be exact here, or the images will be sorted in the wrong order. This is due to a quirk in windows. After marking the files, click Open, and wait a while.
5. Select File -> Encode as djvu from the menu. Choose Bundled, choose a destination file name and location, press Save. Now you can select compression method and resolution. You can read more about these methods in the program's documentation. If you are compressing scanned pages from a book with colour pages, Photo will give the best results. I suggest leaving the resolution to the default choice, however I haven't experimented much with this value. Now press OK and wait for the conversion to finish.
This petty little guide is written after creating only a few documents. I do not in any way claim proficiency regarding the Djvu format or its creation process. This guide was created to help others in the same situation as I was in, and I believe a rudimentary guide is better than nothing.