Collectible Card Game Headquarters

So, yet another tiny update to HQ AI-Enhanced card pictures for Forge. This time only 223 new sets...

Yes, You see correctly, that's not a mistake. Whopping 223 sets (all of the promo sets, that had scans available) are now processed and ready to use.

Card examples:

"Gideon of the Trials" | Open

"Sultai Emissary" | Open

"Jace, Telepath Unbound" | Open

"Flame Javelin" | Open

"Urza's Factory" | Open

Download location is the same:
http://download.austeregrim.net/xlhq_remaster/

...and to make it easier I created two new folders with today's date for all the new sets:
- Sets in Forge - Added 2022-06-27/
AND
- Sets NOT YET in Forge - Added 2022-06-27/

...just grab everything that's in there and You're good.

On top of that, set Q06 from Sets in Forge/ should also be downloaded (I put it in Sets NOT YET in Forge directory by mistake before, it's corrected now).

Enjoy

Huggybaby wrote:I'll add some info here, just in case it might be helpful. If you know this stuff pls don't be insulted.

<snip>

No offence taken. I did not know any of it and this was an interesting read, especially the issues related to verisimilitude and halftones. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

To be honest I am getting a bit lost among all the image sets being published left and right, and I was just looking for clarifications regarding necxelos's release. More specifically I was wondering how it differed from the SuperLQ pictures that kevlahnota used to publish. It seems that he switched to necxelos's remaster recently, but it's not clear to me how he used to produce his images before.

NP. BTW I might have misremembered in that post about XLHQs so I added an edit. It's been a while...The answers lie on an old hard drive which hasn't spun up in years.

I also wonder about all the sets around now. I'm glad that they exist, and it is confusing, although the confusion presents an opportunity for someone who might know to explain the genesis of these projects including the awesome Scryfall.

Arcanist wrote:More specifically I was wondering how it differed from the SuperLQ pictures that kevlahnota used to publish.

1. Kev's resolution is and was 488x680, mine is 745x1040 (this means Kev's images are upscaled in Forge both Desktop and Mobile, mine are displayed in natural resolution most of the time). Kev's images have roughly .70 IJQ (simplifying, it's a compression-to-quality, mind that the same value doesn't mean the same thing between Graphics Software) which introduces some artifacts around the fonts and on artwork, mine is .85 with best compression algorithms to boot.

Arcanist wrote:...but it's not clear to me how he used to produce his images before.

2. Before Kev started downscaling my HQ AI-Enhanced Cards, he was using a mix of Scryfall Scans and Gatherer images for his SuperLQ. His priority was and still is a low file size and big compression, not quality (Super Low-Quality name comes from that).

Arcanist wrote:To be honest I am getting a bit lost among all the image sets being published left and right...

3. There are no images published left and right. There were several dropped attempts at creating something but nothing "alive" anymore. My HQ AI-Enhanced Cards and Kev's SuperLQ (which are also my HQ AI-Enhanced Cards now) are the only complete-ish packs available. We both learn from other's experiences though.

I hope I explained everything properly. Feel free to ask if something is still unclear

This release is gonna be unique, there are a lot of "firsts" in it.

For starters, I managed to master upscaling procedure for Gatherer images. This means SuperLQ is no longer Your only way to have cards from newest sets, HQ AI-Enhanced got You covered. With this being said, sets added are:
- Commander Legends Battle for Baldur's Gate,
- Double Masters 2022,
- Innistrad Double Feature,
- Sorcerer's Apprentice,
- Streets of New Capenna,
- Streets of New Capenna Commander.

Another "first" is my first go at MTGA cards. For now I only added:
- Amonkhet Remastered,
...but more will soon follow.

Last but not least, I added two of the worst-quality-ever MTGO sets:
- Magic Online Promos,
- Magic Online Treasure Chest,
...but don't expect much from those two. MTGO pictures have so terrible source quality that results are passable at best. The only way to improve upon my results is recreating cards from scratch.

Card examples:

"Contractual Safeguard" | Open

"Uchuulon" | Open

"Hullbreaker Horror" | Open

"Dockside Extortionist" | Open

"Vivien's Stampede" | Open

"Drake Stone" | Open

"Island" | Open

So, with all this being said, You can grab this release here:
http://download.austeregrim.net/xlhq_remaster/
...in the Sets in Forge - Added 2022-07-02 directory.

This time I present to You a huge, MTGA-focused update, based on my own screenshots (not the low-res Scryfall ones) and remastered.

In it, You will find:
- Alchemy Innistrad,
- Alchemy Kamigawa,
- Alchemy New Capenna,
- Jumpstart Historic Horizons,
- Historic Anthology 1,
- Historic Anthology 2,
- Historic Anthology 3,
- Historic Anthology 4,
- Historic Anthology 5,

...and all rebalanced cards for Alchemy and Historic, up to 07-07-2022 MTGA Update. You will need to delete all of the:
- AFR,
- ELD,
- IKO,
- JMP,
- KHM,
- MH2,
- MID,
- STX,
- VOW,
- WAR,
- ZNR,
...and replace them with new versions of those directories that contain all of the rebalanced cards.

IMPORTANT: COMPLETELY DELETE OLD DIRECTORIES from the above list, don't just overwrite them. I added MTGA extended art variants, which means files will not overwrite due to 1's and 2's in file names.

Card examples (I like blue color the most so only blue examples this time):

"Discover the Formula" | Open

"Better Offer" | Open

"Tome of the Infinite" | Open

"Body Double" | Open

As usual, You can grab this release here:
http://download.austeregrim.net/xlhq_remaster/
...in the Sets in Forge - Update 07-07-2022/ directory. All of previous directories has been merged for organizational purposes.

Wonderful addition, these MTGA sets are truly amazing! Keep 'em coming, please!

Hi Necxelos,

thank you very much for your monumental work (I've counted 567 MTG sets so far). Maybe i'm asking too much but are you planning also to add tokens and emblems in the future?

Best regards

Heris wrote:Hi Necxelos,

thank you very much for your monumental work (I've counted 567 MTG sets so far). Maybe i'm asking too much but are you planning also to add tokens and emblems in the future?

Best regards

Glad You enjoy it.

And yes, of course I will! It's not asking too much, I do not half-ass things, ever In this case, I'm not done until 100% of everything card-sized, released so far, is done

In fact, I did 600'ish tokens already (and some smaller missing sets in the meantime).

Thing is, thanks to current token files naming convention in Forge, this process cannot be fully automated. I have to name every single file manually (on top of processing hundreds of very small token sets, basically a token set for every actual set) and it takes a lot of time. So Soon TM

I think I'll just release tokens in two parts. Most important (core, expansion, commander) first and the rest later

Heris wrote:(I've counted 567 MTG sets so far).

I counted 506 sets till now... Did I miss something?

BlackLotus82 wrote:

Heris wrote:(I've counted 567 MTG sets so far).

I counted 506 sets till now... Did I miss something?

Probable explanation 1:
- He counted ACTUAL sets, as per Scryfall. Forge does merge a lot of sets into one directory.

Probable explanation 2:
- He counted "Sets not in Scryfall", which there are plenty of. I posted those before, stopped doing so for the time being.

necxelos wrote:

Heris wrote:Hi Necxelos,

thank you very much for your monumental work (I've counted 567 MTG sets so far). Maybe i'm asking too much but are you planning also to add tokens and emblems in the future?

Best regards

Glad You enjoy it.

And yes, of course I will! It's not asking too much, I do not half-ass things, ever In this case, I'm not done until 100% of everything card-sized, released so far, is done

In fact, I did 600'ish tokens already (and some smaller missing sets in the meantime).

Thing is, thanks to current token files naming convention in Forge, this process cannot be fully automated. I have to name every single file manually (on top of processing hundreds of very small token sets, basically a token set for every actual set) and it takes a lot of time. So Soon TM

I think I'll just release tokens in two parts. Most important (core, expansion, commander) first and the rest later

I'm glad to hear this; btw renaming every single file is a long task of course. I don't know if a batch file renamer could help but if this is the case i may suggest this free software which has a lot of functions https://www.advancedrenamer.com/

Keep up with the good work

BlackLotus82 wrote:

Heris wrote:(I've counted 567 MTG sets so far).

I counted 506 sets till now... Did I miss something?

Hello,
if this can help I've attached to this post the list of the 567 zipped files.

Heris wrote:I'm glad to hear this; btw renaming every single file is a long task of course. I don't know if a batch file renamer could help but if this is the case i may suggest this free software which has a lot of functions https://www.advancedrenamer.com/

Keep up with the good work

Batch renamer won't work (in fact I considered writing one but decided against it, I'm a programmer after all), because Forge naming convention is inconsistent, uses pseudo-keywords that don't exist in MtG like "Firebreathing" or "Burn" and adds information that original Scryfall entry simply doesn't have, for example "haste" in name of some tokens, that isn't present on the token itself. This might make sense for Forge devs, but for everybody else, it's just a mess.

Heris wrote:

BlackLotus82 wrote:

Heris wrote:(I've counted 567 MTG sets so far).

I counted 506 sets till now... Did I miss something?

Hello,
if this can help I've attached to this post the list of the 567 zipped files.

My "Probable Explanation 2" was correct I feel so smart now