Collectible Card Game Headquarters

Thank you so much !
I recorded a photoshop action doing what you said and it works perfectly but there are 2 small problems though

- it triples the file size of every image, so my collection will be 40GB+ when all is changed. Do you know how to compress PNG images ?

- The border around the corner is a bit rough , any way to make it smoother ?

I've been running a shell script to convert all of xlhq.jpg files to "full" size. This also trims 20 pixels from around the edges. Not perfect but seems to work well enough. It uses ImageMagick to do the heavy lifting and is easily parallelized. There's

Basically this in a loop:

Code: Select all

FILE="Walking Ballista.xlhq.jpg"
NEWNAME="`echo "$FILE" | sed 's/\.xlhq\.jpg/\.full.jpg/'`"
cp -v "$FILE" "$NEWNAME"
mogrify -crop -20-20 -crop +20+20 -resize 480\>x680\> +repage "$NEWNAME"


I can post a complete version if people are interested.

One other thing I've been wondering is how to check if my collection is missing any card or token images. Is there a canonical list of filenames?

I know how to remove the white borders, the problem is that because of the .JPG to .PNG conversion the file sizes of the cards triple in size so the collection goes from +-15GB to 40+ GB. so it's not really an option. Having a script that automates removing the corners would be awesome though.

As for the tokens, no there isn't a complete list of the tokens that are being used. The cardforge.link token folder hasn't been updated for almost a year now. When a new set is released I just look up the new tokens and add them to the folder using the naming scheming which looks like this

"color_power_toughness_cardname(only put numbers here when there a multitiple variations withing the same expansion)_abilities_ expansion abbreviation (only if that specific token already exists).

When I'm unsure or when the card image doesn't show up, I look up the token producing card in the cardsfolder for more information.

Why save to PNG though? You're never going to get anywhere near the same size from PNG as JPG.

What about for regular cards and not tokens? I've tried to compare the list from mtgjson but there's definitely some naming differences (the spelling of Aether being the most prominent).

The only reason to use PNG is to get the transparency layer for rounded corners - there is no way to do that with JPG. I resize the images down to 520px height - as I am using the android version this is plenty big enough, the collection is under 8GB I think. I also smooth the images with photoshop's smart blur to remove the print dot matrix type effect.

I got a pretty smooth edge by creating the mask manually using a rounded brush for the corner.

Just to clarify on the file size - PNG will be much larger than JPG - but it is already compressed, however the compression works better the simpler the image is - this is why I filter the images to smooth out the print noise and help keep the size down. In the end though you have to decide a compromise between resolution, filesize and whether or not the edges are rounded. I am happy with my smaller smoothed round edged images, but others may prefer to keep the high res scans and either accept the large filesize or having white corners.

I think an easier way is to just change the canvas size from 745 x 1040 to 705 x 1000. It removes the big black borders , white corners and lowers the file sizes.

BTW, have you considered hosting your card collection for Android ? I think people would really appreciate that.

Any chance someone could make a torrent of this... the download speed of Mega is horrid.. 150kb's a second due their throttling, 15.5gb is going to take a while to download....

I personally prefer to have the borders - feels to me more like playing with real cards - that was why I started from the high res scans in the first place. Definitely an alternative compromise though and I think the one the original development team must have made. The idea scenario would be to implement png or vector borders in the game - then the well compressed jpeg borderless images would just form the centre of the image. Perhaps this has already been tried, or is on the backlog. I haven't looked into it.

Consider changing the names of the folders to what they are meant to be named file wise. as in say AER instead of 'AER - Aether Revolt'. I had the issue deleting the ends of file names causing several files (From the vaults sets in particular) to become 'non existent'. They were there, could be accessed but couldn't be deleted due to the colons and dashes in the name of the main file (pictures were fine) from downloading using Mega Sync. TLDR,, Mega and Mega Sync don't like using colons and dashes or other characters in name and when you go to sync it will change the file name to something like From the Vaults%123Angels to which windows (any edition) will have a fit trying to read and refuse to delete it unless you delete it through administrative command prompt line.

I understand where you're coming from, but the reason I use the full name of the set is because it makes it easier to find specific sets that you want to download. Also Forge uses different expansion codes for some of the older sets, for instance

Limited Edition Alpha official set code is "LEA" but Forge uses "A" ect ...

Would removing the "&" and ":" in the set names fix your issue ?

Also what do you think about MEGA Sync ? How long did it take to get all the images? Did you have any problemens with the download limit?

Edit I created a /pics folder containing all the sets https://mega.nz/#F!OJ83DbTD!_zr0Bv_OS48D6I1mHKaj2g. This should be better if you're using MEGA sync to download all the images.

To be honest I am not a fan, I do appreciate the work you've put into uploading and categorising the images but Mega Sync is one of the most annoying tools I've used to date (bar the old iteration before they updated the tool.) They still throttle the download/sync speed to around 150-200kb's a second for free users so the actual sync took about 2 days of just leaving my computer going over night as well as the previous issue I noted in last post with symbols. Overall the pain was worth it, I've been looking for a full up to date 300dpi image collection for forge (compy and tablet). To address the forge codes for sets, I know A was LEA in proper terms, I meant for your catgorisation since you made this for Forge users I presume, use the Forge set codes and perhaps a notepad file of what is what and what goes where or simply a post like the first one you did, it would make life easier if people could just drag and drop.

Overall well done on the collection almost all of the XLHQ's ((a couple missing upon going through them but that doesn't matter, mostly obscure cards.)) and setting them out nicely.

simisays wrote:Also Forge uses different expansion codes for some of the older sets, for instance

Limited Edition Alpha official set code is "LEA" but Forge uses "A" ect ...

Would removing the "&" and ":" in the set names fix your issue ?

Also what do you think about MEGA Sync ? How long did it take to get all the images? Did you have any problemens with the download limit?

I think there's more than that, in the thread linked in my previous post some other differences are listed. I wrote a script to rename the files and directories of the XLHQ torrent, based on a spreadsheet that contains some of the differences regarding set directory names, but it isn't complete nor up to date. If I can find the remaining ones I can update the script.
Regarding MEGA bandwidth limit also applies when you are using one of their client applications.

Asta666 wrote: I think there's more than that, in the thread linked in my previous post some other differences are listed. I wrote a script to rename the files and directories of the XLHQ torrent, based on a spreadsheet that contains some of the differences regarding set directory names, but it isn't complete nor up to date. If I can find the remaining ones I can update the script.

Yeah, but there are other cards that need renaming like Kamigawa flipcards, dual cards, tokens , schemes and planes (they need to be rotated as well). Also some sets are not included in the torrent (UGF, MBP)or were never printed (Magic Online stuff).

Shadowzeny wrote:Overall well done on the collection almost all of the XLHQ's ((a couple missing upon going through them but that doesn't matter, mostly obscure cards.)) and setting them out nicely

Thank you ! Please tell me what cards are missing, I recently fixed some cards that were glossed over and I'm pretty sure everything is correctly named atm. But you never know when there are 28000 + cards