Panel Haus What does one ink buy in Panel Haus?
One ink makes one HD panel. The Pro model costs 2 ink a panel and 4K costs 4. A comic page is about four panels, so 200 ink is roughly 50 pages. Here is the whole exchange rate, and what does not cost ink at all.
· Panel Haus
One ink makes one HD panel. The Pro model costs 2 ink a panel, and 4 ink at 4K. A comic page is about four panels, so 200 ink is roughly 50 pages of comic. Laying out, lettering and exporting cost nothing.
That is the entire exchange rate. Everything below is the working, so you can plan a comic in ink before you start it.
Ink to panels
Ink is the unit you spend when you ask the studio to generate something. What one ink buys depends only on which model drew the panel and at what size.
| Model | Size | Cost per panel |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | HD | 1 ink |
| Pro | 1K | 2 ink |
| Pro | 2K | 3 ink |
| Pro | 4K | 4 ink |
The Free plan draws with the standard model only, so on Free the rate is always one to one. Paid plans can pick the Pro model and a size, and the panel count goes down as the quality goes up. A Creator plan's 200 ink is 200 HD panels, or 100 Pro panels, or 50 at 4K.
Panels to things
Once you know how many panels you are making, ink follows.
| Panels | What that is |
|---|---|
| 1 | a meme, or a single scene |
| 3 to 4 | a strip |
| about 4 | one comic page |
| 48 to 60 | a full 12 page comic |
Page density runs from two panels to six, so four is an average, not a rule. Say "about" when you convert, and budget for the retries you will throw away, which is where most ink actually goes.
Three worked examples
- A strip, standard model. Four panels, 4 ink. Even with a redo on one panel, 5.
- A comic page at 4K. Four panels at 4 ink each, 16 ink. Twelve of those is a 192 ink book.
- A 12 page comic, standard model. 48 to 60 panels, 48 to 60 ink. With a sensible number of retries, call it 70. A Creator plan makes two or three of these a month.
The lesson in the numbers: draft at HD, then regenerate only the panels people will look at closely in Pro. Doing it the other way round costs four times as much for the same story.
What does not cost ink
Everything that is not a generation. Placing panels, choosing a layout, writing dialogue, lettering, choosing fonts, moving pages around, exporting a PNG or a PDF, turning your pages into a Motion clip. None of that touches the balance. Most of the time you spend on a comic is spent on exactly those things.
Monthly ink and topped up ink
There are two kinds of ink in an account and they behave differently.
- Monthly ink comes with a plan and is replaced at each renewal. It is meant to be spent that month.
- Topped up ink is bought outright, from inside the studio, in any amount from $5 to $200. It never expires and it stacks on top of the monthly allowance.
Monthly ink is spent first, so anything you topped up is still there when the month resets. Per panel, plan ink is the cheaper of the two; topping up is for the month you need more than you planned for. The current prices for both are on the pricing page, which is generated from the same numbers the checkout uses, so it cannot go stale the way a post can.
Where the rate comes from
The same three numbers that the studio charges you with are the ones printed here, read from one configuration file rather than typed twice. If the cost of a Pro panel ever changes, the pricing page changes with it. The panel-to-page conversions are averages from the layouts members actually use, and the full reasoning is in How many panels should a comic page have?.