Resized and Cleaned Card Scans Using AI Gigapixel

[FleshParade]

Inspired by the “deep learning” post started by austinio7116, I decided to test out Topaz A. I. Gigapixel to see how it would affect the XLHQ card scans.

I was extremely impressed with the software’s ability to remove the halftone printing artifacts.

Take a look at some before and after examples:
imgur (dot) com/a/ZtcP460


To give back to the community I uploaded my processed files for various card games. I used a free mega.nz account which seemed to be the prefered method here.

I also have larger TIFF versions of these to share if anyone wants them.

LINKS:
MTG Resized Cards:
•CSV file containing 116 links to edition zip files:
bayfiles(dot)com/Y6qeB3sen9/MTG_Resize_Links_csv

•Mega nz folder (allowing for individual image file downloading):
mega(dot)nz/#F!eRFQ3YRb!9Ts4K-ckoFJu9qxGstCeug


Star Wars Resized Cards:
•CSV file containing 23 links to edition zip files:
bayfiles(dot)com/Xaq3Bdscn4/SW_Resize_Links_csv

•Mega nz folder (allowing for individual image file downloading):
mega(dot)nz/#F!uF1XQA7Y!5AgnQHSCQVxDPZHRbj8k1w


Pokemon Resized Cards:
•Mega nz folder:
mega(dot)nz/#F!6FsVgSbA!IQkaPgyUwICGCoFu5OBbAw


Hope you all enjoy!

[AStrangerIsHere]

I looked quickly at the first link, and it's pretty impressive. There's no more this grain on the pictures, and the cards look cleaner now.

[hernan1234]

I think the work what you done with the scans are great, like AStrangerIsHere says "There's no more this grain on the picture" and looks like images taken from MTG, Please keep the good job!. can you explain me all the process and how much time takes you to process the images, what are the specs of your computer just for curiosity. And before i let go thanks for sharing with the community!

[FleshParade]

I’m glad people are enjoying these.

For the MTG XLHQ cards my process is as follows:
I use A.I. Gigapixel to enlarge the images by 400% (4x) and save them as uncompressed TIFs to avoid any potential compression. (This is probably overkill)

I then use a 3rd party photo program to resize the images by 50% and then convert them to JPGs. This makes them much easier for people to use but retains an acceptable amount of the quality.

Therefore the final JPG files are actually enlarged by only 200%.

I add “_Resized” at the end of the file named to help people differentiate them from the original unmodified scans.


Pre Compression Example:
Here’s an example of an image I enlarged by 400% before compressing it:
mega(dot)nz/#!rZ8D2aTC!jy3wUlWq9ExRqamVM_x2IFq28k7EFxBRVzm9ZHyOwbI

Here’s that same file after being reduced by 50% and converted to JPG:
mega(dot)nz/#!jFlH0KKZ!kWtGHIAVp7k0ww1Iuc4pqzAo2TDgkrH3zlDZW9MLH7Q


Problem sets:
Sometimes A.I. Gigapixel’s results are less fruitful because the software mistakenly recognizes the halftone printing artifacts as part of the actual image. It seems to be consistent between a whole edition set which leads me to believe that it’s either being affected by how that set was printed or something about how it was scanned.

These sets I processed had the most problematic results:
mega(dot)nz/#F!vVdyWApQ!iTw4zPV9Tf1XVsZJlC54CQ

(Note that they still look slightly better than their original scans but are not nearly as clear as the ones I posted last week.)

[austinio7116]

Very interesting. I knew someone would make a good site that upsampled photos like this. Does seem to do a great job on the high res cards too. All too high res for my mobile version though .

[austinio7116]

Maybe for the sets that it struggles on you could preprocess the cards a little to remove the halftone effect (either a smart blur of some kind or just downsampling) then the superresolution would bring it back up smoother

[hernan1234]

Please can you try reprocess the Mythic Edition sets?, them are my favourite ones, and my pc dont have the power to make the beautiful work what you made. Thank you so much.
Hernan1234

[necxelos]

Is this project alive? Those pics are absolutely gorgeous, they are sharp as scalpel and I love them. Sadly, the posted MEGA link only has sets up to M15 which is very old.

[necxelos]

I'm also very sad to inform that direct links to sets are long dead and at the same time some sets in mega are corrupted and can't be downloaded. So far I pinpointed two: P02 (Portal Second Age) and NPH (New Phyrexia) but there might be more.

[EDIT 1] And there is more. MBS (Mirrodin Besieged) is also broken. There's also good part of the news. In NPH case only 1 image ended up being actually broken but to work around the issue I needed to download each of 175 images separately (and manually) and pull off some crazy techniques to retrieve damaged file itsels (which also ended up being in far worse quality than anything else in the process).

[EDIT 2] For NPH and MBS this was one corrupted file in each that makes it impossible to download entire set as a ZIP from mega. Those are "Wing Splicer" and "Glissa the Traitor" respectively. For P02 it's somehow entire set being corrupted even though by downloading files one by one none had issues.

[EDIT 3] M10 is missing one plain and one mountain variant.

[EDIT 4] Odyssey is missing Cephalid Looter variant, which (unlike other missing variants that I do not mention) actually differs mechanically - possesses additional Wizard subtype.

[EDIT 5] LEB (Beta) have several wrongly named cards, several duplicated cards and anything between Gray Ogre and Howling Mines is missing. Overall, total mess here (as advertised, since it was commented as incomplete on mega).

[EDIT 6] I just realized. Even though overall sets on mega.nz end with M15 (more or less) some sets are completely ommited like Masters series for example.

Please oh please OP, come back to us

[amyacker]

Excellent stuff.

[FleshParade]

Hi all,

Sorry for the late response to your messages!



First I’ll address the expired bayfiles links.

Apparently bayfiles only keeps a file active if that file is downloaded within the first few months after being uploaded. Otherwise files not downloaded within those 3 months are removed. This would explain why the main link to the CSV and only two editions (10E & FUT) are still available for download. Those editions were likely the only two zip files that were downloaded early on.

I would re-upload these zips to Mega however I’ve reached my max storage limit.

Please share suggestions for alternative file sharing sites or PM me with a better quality upload service if you’re comfortable temporarily sharing that account with me.



Now I’ll address necxelos’s other comments.

The source images I processed came from a giant XLHQ collection I downloaded a while back. This is where many of the “wrongly named” or “missing” card issues likely stem from (whoever curated that original collection). That’s also why I haven’t processed any editions past M15.

Here’s a downloadable CSV which contains MD5 checksums for each JPG image file. It also contains the edition code (some cleanup needed in this column), the file size, and each image’s resolution.

bayfiles(DOT)com/R0J8k3Bbn4/MTG_Card_Catalog_csv
(Still not allowed to add links to my posts)

Note that there are 20 items in the S00 edition that are missing image resolution data along with 55 items in the ATH edition that are also missing that info.

Feel free to use this CSV to help you track and identify further inconsistencies. I suggest creating a shared google sheet of some kind by importing the CSV. This could also be helpful to collectively rate the success of processed images and identify images that should be re-processed using different techniques as austinio7116 mentioned above.



Necxelos can you clarify regarding the corruption issue you experienced when downloading from Mega. I was able to download the PO2 folder as a zip from Mega and it worked fine. Maybe my account’s bandwidth restrictions maxed out at the time you tried downloading. That was my initial intention behind sharing the bayfile links, to reduce bandwidth caps on mega.


Hope this was helpful.

[Huggybaby]

Yo FleshParade, welcome back.

Try Mediafire for sharing files.

PS Do you know of an AI that could clean electronic schematics?

[judotrente]

Thanks for sharing all this content, I might use some of the artworks for my custom reprints !

[Phaellow]

Hey there, I'm having trouble reproducing the results you have in your example albums, namely in smoothness.

I saw your post with the process, but I still have some questions:

• Do you use Manual or Auto settings? If you use Manual, what are your settings?
• Do you disable Face Refinement? (I'm assuming you do, since we're not dealing with faces)
• How do you downscale the images? I'm assuming different software use different algorithms, and maybe this is where some filtering comes into place.

Thank you!

[orlydb]

All folders are empty, please reupload! Thanks!