XLHQ card scans with art from wizards

[lukaszsw]

Hi,

First of all I want to thank all the people to contributed to making scans available here. I used them a lot to make high quality proxies

I've just noticed that scans from XLHQ are in exact size to insert art pictures from wizards site (like http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/mm/etrtdfghjudfgfjhddfdfd.jpg)

Is it a coincidence? Or perhaps it was made so for the very reason to insert these pictures into scans.
If so: is there a package that consist of scans with HQ art from wizards website?

I found that even with XLHQ scans art is still notably clearer when you insert the original art from wizards website.

[extreme]

xlhqs are scans at 300 dpi, which is the usual resolution for printing. I guess they posted the images at that resolution too. It's a coincidence stemming from printing standards. And of course their image is sharper, since it's not a 3 sq inches scan, it's the original artwork reduced to a smaller size.

[lukaszsw]

Ok, I guess it is a coincidence and a very convenient one.

So my question is - why not make another XLHQ package with all the artwork replaced with the one from wizards page?

It only takes a minute or so to fit the image into the frame since it is the same size. Sometimes the image is a bit off (like it was cropped differently for the cards) but it still only takes a few seconds to make a mask layer in photoshop so it matches the card.

I can contribute some card images since I've already replaced the art.

The image below shows how much original artwork (left) surpasses the scan in high definition (right)

[extreme]

and if we're at it, why not generate them from a template with the artwork replaced ? It's going to be better than the scans, for sure.
In my case, because I've also got a life.
But anyone could do it, there are a lot of good templates around.

[lukaszsw]

I see your point but no need to get all sour with comment such as "I have a life". A simple "It would take a considerable amount of time and I, among others, find it redundant/not worth it" would suffice.

[Huggybaby]

Take it easy...

A package with higher quality artwork would be interesting. Another guy here has generated all the pics using up to date Oracle text, the two projects could be merged.

The reason we don't release super high quality pics that have original artwork and vector generated frames, etc., is because that isn't our purpose. Our purpose is to 1) document the cards as they were printed, not try to simulate what the printing plates looked like.

Also, our pics are designed to 2) be used on a computer screen. The fact that they can also be used for proxies is a side-effect, and other apps exist (like the HQ Card generator) that do a better job of printing crystal clear proxies.

[extreme]

I wasn't condescending, sorry if misunderstood. It's those damn smileys And Huggy is right.

[Huggybaby]

Lack of emoticon usage has bitten me more than anything else probably, but I still don't like using them.

[skibulk]

So my question is - why not make another XLHQ package with all the artwork replaced with the one from wizards page?

I think it would be nice to have this, but I don't have the time to contribute to this either. Ideally, somebody should script an app which takes a directory of our cropped images, generates an index on all of them, and then compares to a directory containing images from the Wizards website. In this way we could automate the matchups and possibly image cropping too. Since there are literally thousands of images, this seems like a good idea. Obviously, I have thought a little about this. I lack however the time or knowledge to implement it.

See this article for an image fingerprinting algorithm. There are many website downloaders for spidering and saving images automatically.

[deurk]

I've implemented a light fingerprinting algorithm to check mistakes between crops and full pictures archives I was working with, so I could probably adapt it to the need but if I understand, time has to be spent looking for those WotC pictures, which would be a no-go for me.