Upscale low res card images to high res using Deep Learning

[MaxMtg]

It's easier to get images from scryfall
https://scryfall.com/sets/ddt
https://scryfall.com/sets/cma

[austinio7116]

They are easy to get, but they are just bicubic upsampled gatherer images as far as I can see.

[austinio7116]

I'll give them a go anyway when I have time, it will be an interesting experiment.

[austinio7116]

The results of upsampling the lower res gatherer images were very poor - the network was specifically trained for the 370*265 images and would need to be retrained for the gatherer images.

[kudit]

If it can be trained with gatherer images, that could be useful as there are many foreign language cards that would be very nice to have higher res.

[austinio7116]

Just for fun I ran the unstable spoilers through the network. I had to make a few changes to the script to ensure full coverage of the full art images (previously I was stamping a black border over the top so it didn't matter that the patch based approach did not divide evenly across the images full width). I have prepared the images in various resolutions, but here are a couple of the 300dpi jpgs:

[austinio7116]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1e2aV2 ... RjkskaNDan

[Bog Wraith]

Here are the Rivals of Ixalan LQ images.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/7afba9vxa ... Ixalan.zip

[austinio7116]

Thanks - I have a script to scrape them from the wizards own spoiler page - so I have everything processed up to yesterday, just waiting on the final 20 or so from the big last spoil, but hope to get everything finished today.

[austinio7116]

RIX done: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1h4bXK ... CZrNZk7kxn

[austinio7116]

The tokens are bundled into there too, they will need moving to the tokens folder for Forge. I have not been able to test the token names yet as the cards are not all scripted.

[Bog Wraith]

Wonderfully done as has now become the norm with this great process of yours, my friend.

So for future sets, do you no longer require the LQ images from us now that you have a script for them? Let us know.

Thank you again for this awesome service you provide so that we can play with such high quality cards until the HQ versions are released, it's really appreciated!

[austinio7116]

Thanks, yes, there is no need for any LQ input as I can get them from the wizards web pages.

[Huggybaby]

I continue to be amazed by the results of this project, so thank you. It generates a feeling of "wow", and a sense of delight and magic, because it makes real something we knew was possible but had never seen realized to practical effect. The output is easily good enough in my opinion to replace HQ pics for most purposes. If this technology had existed a few years ago the HQ Pics project might have been stillborn.

For those reasons and a few more this topic has earned stickiness.

I have a question: how soon are these pics available before the HQ pics come out, on average?

[austinio7116]

It takes 3 minutes to process each card with the deep convolutional network, then I have a bit of postprocessing in Photoshop, so I can get it out around 1 day after the final Wizards spoiler page is updated, assuming I have enough time at my computers.