Open source · AGPL-3.0 Self-hosted · your data, your server 7 UI languages

Comic Lettering, Localization & Production Workspace

Plan, prepare, letter, translate, review and publish comics in one integrated workflow — on a single machine, over LAN, or with a shared server.

ComiKumi editor
Features

Everything a lettering team needs

From multi-language bubbles to full vertical Japanese typesetting.

Multi-language lettering

Every text and style field on a bubble can be overridden per language, or fall back to a shared base value. Add as many languages as your project needs.

Full vertical Japanese typesetting

Tategaki with forced line breaks, group- and mono-ruby furigana, bōten emphasis dots, automatic tate-chū-yoko for digit/Latin runs, and kinsoku shori line-breaking rules.

Four element types

Speech bubbles (rectangle, oval, or free perspective quad), placed images, curved title/SFX text along a Bézier path, and panel-reference polygons.

Procedural screentone fills

Dot, line, or crosshatch halftone patterns — with adjustable spacing, tone, and angle — as a bubble background fill or a text fill, including on curved/rotated SFX text where the pattern stays one continuous field instead of breaking at each glyph.

Clip & merge bubbles

Cut a bubble along a straight line so it sits flush against a panel edge, or non-destructively merge several bubbles into one continuous outline for dialogue that flows across them.

Layers & panel locking

A navigator lists every bubble, image, and curved text grouped by panel, each with its own lock toggle — plus one-click "lock all panels" and "lock panel + its bubbles" so overlapping panels stop getting in the way of what's underneath.

Layer order

Bring any bubble, image, or curved text in front of or behind the others with one click — let an image patch sit in front of a bubble instead of always behind it. Respected in the editor, PNG export, and layered PSD export.

Lettering presets

Reusable styles that live-update every linked bubble or curved text, field by field, without overwriting values a preset doesn't define — or start from a built-in library (Manga SFX, Whisper, Shout).

Context view & glossary

A reading-order-aware sidebar with speaker, voice notes, and panel crop, plus a project glossary with live highlighting and optional furigana readings.

AI assistant

Chat backed by your own API key or a ChatGPT sign-in, plus ten review-gated actions — translate missing bubbles, fix overflow, assign characters, suggest chapters, and more. Nothing touches your page until you click Apply.

Auto-Bubbles (detection + OCR)

Find every speech-bubble region on a page and read the text inside automatically, entirely client-side — no server round-trip, no data leaves the browser. Every result goes through a review panel before it becomes a real bubble.

Cleaning (Inpainting)

Remove the original printed text and reconstruct the artwork underneath, with rectangle, freehand, polygon, and brush tools to shape exactly which area gets cleaned. Shown as a before/after comparison — the original scan is never touched.

Script planning

A volume-wide script editor for plot, panel layout, and per-language dialogue — link it to a real page and insert dialogue with one click.

Project asset folders

Fonts, SVG bubble contours, and images live in a shared library, a per-project folder, or both — the project version wins on a filename collision.

Import Clip Studio Paint files

Add .clip project files directly as new pages — no manual flattening or export step in CSP first, and full resolution when possible.

PNG, print, vector & CBZ export

Export ready-to-publish PNGs, CMYK TIFFs for print, vector PDF/PSD with editable text, or CBZ with full ComicInfo.xml metadata — plus JSON import/export for a whole volume's layouts.

Review & QC comments

Pin, box, or freehand comments anywhere on a page, with @-mentions of specific accounts or roles — plus optional email notifications so feedback reaches the right person.

Workflow status board

Track Cleaning, Translation, Lettering, and QC status — plus an assignee — per page and per language, so the team sees where every page stands at a glance.

Read/Review viewer

A dedicated, distraction-free reading screen for QC passes: zoom-to-panel, reading-direction-aware page turning, double-page spreads, and side-by-side comparison of up to four pages.

Deploy anywhere

Run it solo on your machine, share it on your studio's network, or host it on a server reachable over the internet — role-based accounts keep it safe either way.

Webtoon (long-strip) support

Mark a volume as a webtoon and letter it at a usable zoom with a fit-width, scrollable canvas, read it back with a continuous strip mode that flows across episode boundaries, and export it safely with automatic guards against the size limits a very tall page can hit.

Asset Manager

Browse, upload, rename, delete, and folder-organize a project's fonts, images, and SVG bubble outlines from a dedicated screen instead of only the editor's inline pickers — plus a separate instance-scope manager for the shared library every project draws from.

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Paste images from the clipboard

Copy an image in another app — e.g. "Copy image" on an AI-generated picture in ChatGPT's or Gemini's web UI — and press Ctrl+V/Cmd+V right on the page. It drops into the selected panel as a Cut-Panel replacement, or as a new placed image, no save-to-disk-then-upload detour.

Connectors / Publishing (Experimental)

Publish a finished chapter straight to an external platform instead of exporting files by hand. AI MANGA Connect is the first connector: connect an account once, then publish a chapter with live progress through rendering, upload, and validation.

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Screenshots

A real editor, not a mockup

Every screenshot below is the actual app, running on a real project.

How it works

Your data stays under your control

  • No forced cloud, no telemetry

    A small Express server reads and writes files on disk — yours. Run it solo on your laptop, shared on your studio's network, or on a server reachable over the internet; nothing is ever sent to a third party.

  • One file per project

    A project is a single JSON file — languages, characters, glossary, presets, and settings — next to your existing folder of scanned pages.

  • Role-based access

    Viewer, translator, letterer, and admin roles per project, so a team can safely share one server — on a local network or over the internet.

  • Free and open source

    AGPL-3.0-licensed. Use it, study it, modify it, self-host it for your team.

Download the Windows/macOS/Linux desktop app →
# or run from source:
# requires Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+
npm install
npm run dev
# server on :3001, client on :5173
Languages

Built for multilingual teams

The interface itself speaks seven languages — independent from however many content languages your project translates into.

English Deutsch Français Italiano Español 日本語 한국어

Ready to letter your next volume?

Clone it, run it, and create your own admin account — no third-party signup, no SaaS subscription.