Page Import (AI panel splitting)

Many artists already have finished works as flat page images — Photoshop exports, scans, or CBZ pages. The Page Import wizard turns them into an interactive PanelWave work without manual cropping:

1. You upload the page images and choose the reading direction and page format.
2. AI detects the panels on every page — rectangles, nesting, and reading order.
3. You review and correct the detection: move, resize, add, delete, and reorder panels.
4. The importer crops every panel (inside its border) from the full-resolution page, saves it as an asset, and rebuilds each page — every panel placed at its original position, in reading order, with linear navigation wired up.

Running an import

Imports are resumable — leave the wizard at any point and continue from the Open imports list. Cancel import stops a running detection or import: a cancel during the import step stops the cropping and upscaling where it is, and when the import was creating a new work that has no pages yet, that empty work is removed again instead of lingering as an empty draft. Discard on the Open imports list drops a session you don't want to finish.

The review step in detail

For each page (thumbnail rail on the left) you see the page image with the detected panels drawn on top:

• Move and resize — drag a rectangle, or drag its handles. Numbered badges show the reading order.
• Add — click Add panel, then draw the rectangle on the page.
• Delete — select a panel and press Delete (or the Delete button).
• Reading order — the ordered list on the right; move panels up or down.
• Nested panels — an inset panel floating inside a larger one (common with full-bleed artwork) is marked blue and dashed; use Nested inside in the inspector to fix the relationship. Insets render above their parent in the finished work.
• Warnings — the AI flags its own uncertainty ("a panel may be missing or merged"); treat those pages with extra attention.
• Re-detect this page — runs the AI again for a single page after you've, say, realized a page was exported wrong.

Everything autosaves; the original AI suggestion is kept so your edits are never silently mixed with it.

What detection handles

• Regular panel grids with gutters — the bread-and-butter case.
• Full-bleed panels whose artwork runs to the page edges.
• Nested panels — framed panels floating on top of a larger (often full-bleed) background panel.

Slanted or non-rectangular panels get their best rectangular bounding box — adjust in review. Detection quality varies with art style; busy, low-contrast, or unusually structured pages simply need a little more correction. That is what the review step is for.

Upscaling and credits

Panel crops inherit the resolution of your page files. A panel cut from a ~1400 px wide page is often only 400–900 px — fine on phones, soft on desktop, and clearly blurry in full-screen panel view on a 4K display. The optional AI upscaling step enlarges undersized crops faithfully (no invented detail) to a quality target you pick:

Only panels below the target are upscaled; large crops are never touched (and never charged). Before the import runs, the review step shows the exact cost — how many panels will be upscaled and how many credits that takes, next to your balance.

Credits are PanelWave's prepaid wallet for metered AI features (upscaling sends your images to a third-party AI service with real per-image cost — the settings step notes this):

• Paid plans include a monthly credit allowance; it is applied automatically.
• The exact cost is reserved up-front and only actually spent per successfully upscaled panel. If a panel can't be upscaled (or the service is unavailable), it imports at its original resolution and the reserved credits return to your wallet automatically — a partial failure never fails the import and never costs you the failed panels. The reservation is also released when you cancel or discard the session, and when an idle session expires (see Limits and quotas).
• Short on credits? The wizard says exactly how many are needed versus available; the import stays blocked until you lower the quality target, disable upscaling, or top up.

Limits and quotas

A completed import counts once against the monthly allowance; retrying failed steps inside a session does not.

Unfinished sessions don't keep their uploads forever. The page images of a session are held in temporary storage until the import creates the panel assets. Once a session has been idle for 30 days, a daily cleanup discards it: its page images are removed, any reserved upscale credits go back to your wallet, and an empty new work it had created is removed — finish or discard older sessions before then. Completed imports are unaffected: their crops (and any kept pages) already live in the work's asset library.

Appending needs edit rights at import time. When you add pages to an existing work, your Owner, Admin, or Editor role on that work is checked when the session starts and again when you click Import. If you were removed from the team or given a lower role while the session sat in review, the import is refused and nothing is added.

After the import

The result is a normal PanelWave work:

• Every panel is an image asset (the borderless crop) set as the panel's background layer — manage them in the Asset Library; web-optimized variants are generated automatically.
• Pages match your originals — each panel sits at its original position on the page, in the reading order you confirmed.
• A linear reading graph is created for new works, so the work is immediately playable in Preview; add choices and branching later.
• Now letter it — add speech bubbles on top of the artwork so the work can be localized, and bring in audio or hotspots as you like.

Common errors

Related pages