HQ PICS DOWNLOADS and Status List (MTG) 2013

[charlequin]

Presenting... Kaladesh.

Magic's 73rd expansion, Kaladesh visits a plane we first saw in Magic Origins and fleshes it out dramatically. It's full of powerful artifacts:



As well as other nifty cards:



And gorgeous basic lands:



This set also introduces the new concept of Planeswalker Decks, introductory products aimed at new players which contain new and alternate art cards, which are included in this release:



This set's release is a bit different than normal: we discovered official WotC renders in XLHQ size used for their set survey and chose to use those as our source material for the standard set cards (minus the basic lands) instead of fresh scans. I didn't want to just use these images (with their awkwardly clashing style from our previous releases) unchanged though, so these images have all been put through a process of four-color separation, given images of real card holostamps where needed, and put through our processing regimen to give them as real a feel as possible. This is a first attempt, so do provide feedback as appropriate.

As a result, our thanks list is a bit long this time out: thanks to skibulk for scanning of lands and tokens and Decked Studios for initial processing; to dodnyjv and kudit for finding and hosting the renders respectively, and to Teppic for the scans of the PW deck cards.

[Xitax]

If you want some quick and dirty feedback, it seems like the WoTC renders have a lot more contrast and vibrancy than the typical scanned cards. I suggest putting the renders next to your target scan (with the colors you want) in the same window and figuring out what the conversion parameters should be by playing with it until they match closely.

[charlequin]

I did actually calibrate my output for these based on comparisons between scanned and rendered cards, and we typically aim for a pretty saturated output for our typical sets. I can see that the contrast might be a bit lower on the scans so I might look at making some tweaks, but probably not anything huge.

[HUGO]

Hello everybody!

Thanks for the work updating the HQ pics. Its possible update for torrent or mega with ALL pics 200 DPI in .full? I think for MWS new players its better have a folder with all pics

I go to download the folder of goblin so he dont have the pics in .full

[charlequin]

Presenting the 1998 World Championships Decks.



Y'all know the drill on these by now. These decks happen to be back from what I still think of as my heyday -- I used to run a white weenie deck almost identical to Hacker's list here -- so these have some particular nostalgia to me. Otherwise, this set has all the usual -- cool old spells! weirdly inefficient creatures! still the best basic plains!



This set's notable quirk is, I guess, that the cards from Ice Age block that appear here have no bevels and weird cut-off edges? Because I guess (and I never realized this before) after Ice Age block they changed from frames where the illustration is larger than the text box to ones where it's the same size? And these decks use the original card layouts, but in this case it looks like they forgot to resize these properly so the edges all got cut off? The weird minutiae of MTG layout and printing, everybody.



As with previous entries in this series, thanks to ohforf, rotarydials, and kudit for their assistance on this big project.

[rodolmedo]

hello, do you have this tokens scanned?
i count 17 in total (acording to magiccardmarket website)

[charlequin]

All the Magic Player Rewards tokens have been scanned and released in the XLHQ Promos torrent.

[stest1]

Just out of curiosity, are there any plans to update the torrents (for both sets and promos) with the new releases? Would be really helpful to have everything in one place.

Thanks for all of the work you guys put into this. Much appreciated!

[charlequin]

Just out of curiosity, are there any plans to update the torrents (for both sets and promos) with the new releases? Would be really helpful to have everything in one place.

Yep. The current iteration was released in February 2016, I've been planning to update about once a year. I'll likely get started prepping the next one once C16 and the rest of the WC/PT decks are released. Promos will follow a little while after that.

[charlequin]

Two more sets.

First is World Championship Decks 1997, completing our releases of the WC decks! (Just the 1996 set of Pro Tour decks left now.)



This set stretches all the way back to the first full block ever released in Ice Age. This set has another visual formatting quirk -- some of the card bevels are cut off or missing, similar to the issue in the 98 deck.



Thanks again to rotarydials, kudit, and ohforf for enabling this release.

---

The other release is a bit more off the beaten path: French Homelands.



Thanks to new shopper tempest for initial processing as well as some scans, and another source for the bulk of the scans.

[Bog Wraith]

Deck # 3 of the 97 WC decks is empty in both the 200 & 300dpi folders. Deck # 4 only has images for the 200dpi folder as the 300dpi is also missing the images.

[charlequin]

Deck # 3 of the 97 WC decks is empty in both the 200 & 300dpi folders. Deck # 4 only has images for the 200dpi folder as the 300dpi is also missing the images.

I probably hit another sync issue with the MEGA app. I'll fix it up when I'm at my home system again.

[JohnnyTH]

Good evening, first I want to express my appreciation for this new experiment of the scans in a language other than english. I think it's a great idea.

About this Homeland set I have a question. Is it a processing problem or the inner frame is actually smaller than the english cards?

Please compare these:



I obtained the english version from the torrent, and the french version from mega (more releases).

[charlequin]

The new images were processed based on the size and measurements we'd put together for 5E frame cards, i.e. a content area of 1340 x 1920. Looking just casually right now at some card images, it seems like it's possible the pre-5E cards actually had a larger content area and smaller border in comparison. If I can get the source info to double-check this, I'll re-process this set if needed to fix that issue.

What would be really handy is if anyone has access to an early card (preferrably Ice Age, Homelands, or Alliances), a later old-frame card (Invasion-era, if possible), an 8E frame card, and an M15 frame card all at the same time, so I can compare and adjust any bordering requirements as needed.

[rodolmedo]

where are born of the gods and journy into nix pictures?
i couldn't find them in the torrent file or the the mega folders