Collectible Card Game Headquarters

Topace wrote:I hope it's ok and helpful if I post the scripts I use here.

Post'em. It may help others.

Here's the script to download pictures for MH2 and H1R from scryfall!

As always:
1. create corresponding folders in your MA Pictures-folder
2. if necessary, adjust the path name within the script to match the location of your MA-folder
3. rename the script from *.txt to *.ps1
4. run with PowerShell to start downloading
5. after download, search and replace all occurrences of "(" and ")" with "[" and "]". (Easiest done with "PowerRename", which is part of Microsofts Power Toys)

HF!

Is it just me, or has the quality of the picture renderer lessened as of late? It just struck me when looking up the "Wall of Swords" (Unlimited edition). The textbox does not show past resemblance to the card (actually most pronounced in newer editions, where there is a line between rules and flavour text), the "coypright" symbol is missing for the artist, Artist name is centered instead of aligned to the left, and the edition symbol is completely wrong (in fact, there is no such symbol for A, B, U and R...!).
WHY is this screwed up all of a sudden? I can't remember it being messed up like that in the past!

Sorry, I got delayed due to holidays & stuff

Finally, here's the script for AFR & AFC!

As always:
1. create corresponding folders in your MA pictures folder
2. if necessary, adjust the path name within the script to match the location of your MA folder
3. rename the script from *.txt to *.ps1
4. run with PowerShell to start downloading
5. after download, search and replace all occurrences of "(" and ")" with "[" and "]". (Easiest done with "PowerRename", which is part of Microsoft Power Toys)

HF!

chreschi wrote:Is it just me, or has the quality of the picture renderer lessened as of late? It just struck me when looking up the "Wall of Swords" (Unlimited edition). The textbox does not show past resemblance to the card (actually most pronounced in newer editions, where there is a line between rules and flavour text), the "coypright" symbol is missing for the artist, Artist name is centered instead of aligned to the left, and the edition symbol is completely wrong (in fact, there is no such symbol for A, B, U and R...!).
WHY is this screwed up all of a sudden? I can't remember it being messed up like that in the past!

We had two overlapping and somewhat contradictory goals for the HQ Pics project:
1) Document card sets for posterity, preserving the characteristics of the print run. including, say, color tint differences, print aberrations etc.
2) Provide images optimized to be used in computer card games.

Goal number 1) is increasingly less possible, until more resources are made available.
For years we had a team of volunteers in place to scan and process actual cards---but now we don't. So more wonderful volunteers have stepped forward to scrape images from websites, and sometimes even use AI processing to "upscale" and enhance. It's been a long time since we've had access to scans of real cards, so our original remit of verisimilitude is sadly out the window. Scraped images just won't contain all the information that a real card has.

Possibly, one day in the future, another team will reassemble, and bring all the newer sets up to date with real scans, but honestly I don't see it happening any time soon, because it's much less work to automatically scrape a site and run images through a processing script than it is to collect hundreds of cards, then scan them, manually remove dirt, process and optimize. Starting with scans leads to the best quality images IME, but the costs in money and labor are high.

HB

Huggybaby wrote:We had two overlapping and somewhat contradictory goals for the HQ Pics project:
1) Document card sets for posterity, preserving the characteristics of the print run. including, say, color tint differences, print aberrations etc.
2) Provide images optimized to be used in computer card games.

Goal number 1) is increasingly less possible, until more resources are made available.
For years we had a team of volunteers in place to scan and process actual cards---but now we don't. So more wonderful volunteers have stepped forward to scrape images from websites, and sometimes even use AI processing to "upscale" and enhance. It's been a long time since we've had access to scans of real cards, so our original remit of verisimilitude is sadly out the window. Scraped images just won't contain all the information that a real card has.

Possibly, one day in the future, another team will reassemble, and bring all the newer sets up to date with real scans, but honestly I don't see it happening any time soon, because it's much less work to automatically scrape a site and run images through a processing script than it is to collect hundreds of cards, then scan them, manually remove dirt, process and optimize. Starting with scans leads to the best quality images IME, but the costs in money and labor are high.

HB

Thank you for your extensive reply. I get that it's labor-intensive to obtain a "near-perfect" image quality. Personally, I would be content with lower res as well, but I get the point.
My original question has not much to do with the card image, however. It's more about the fact that suddenly (in my perception), card frames, symbols, font and many other things seem to be wrong. I never noticed that before. And in fact, many other programs show the correct data. As the card renderer was one of the things that made MA unique, I'm in some doubt... Again: the renderer, not the (scanned) image.

Example (Magic Album vs MTG Studio)

First of all, thank you for your important observation.

Your perception is likely correct, but Goblin Hero would have to speak to that as I'm not involved. I'm pretty sure that Magic Album also relies on volunteers to keep resources up to date, which as you know we are short of. We have always had someone pop up to help out whenever things got far enough behind, but no help is on the horizon now.

MTG Studio costs almost $30.00, and if sales are even moderate then they probably can dedicate a person to keeping things current. Resources will always flow to the money, and we've never had or offered any.

MTG is no longer new, exciting and different. It's sad for me, but maybe with the proliferation of other CCGs (and there are LOTS nowadays) there isn't much demand for this any more. Or maybe it exists on another forum of which I'm unaware.

Whatever happens, we were the first. MWSHQ--->CCGHQ. We'll see what the future holds. Maybe we'll be surprised and delighted again some day!

Update: Scripts to download Pictures for MID, MIC and CMR from Scryfall

As always:
1. create corresponding folders in your MA pictures folder
2. if necessary, adjust the path name within the script to match the location of your MA folder
3. rename the script from *.txt to *.ps1
4. run with PowerShell to start downloading
5. after download, search and replace all occurrences of "(" and ")" with "[" and "]". (Easiest done with "PowerRename", which is part of Microsoft Power Toys)

HF!

Update: Scripts to download Pictures for VOW, VOC and ZNC from Scryfall

Sorry, I'm very late this time - work hit me hard...

Happy Holidays everyone!

As always:
1. create corresponding folders in your MA pictures folder
2. if necessary, adjust the path name within the script to match the location of your MA folder
3. rename the script from *.txt to *.ps1
4. run with PowerShell to start downloading
5. after download, search and replace all occurrences of "(" and ")" with "[" and "]". (Easiest done with "PowerRename", which is part of Microsoft Power Toys)

Hello everyone,I'm New to the site,just started using Magic Album. Thank you for all these picture files, If anyone is interested the file for Streets of New Capenna Promo pictures

Make a folder Streets of New Capenna in your \pictures\Promo Cards\ directory then make a folder ENG in the new Streets of New Capenna directory

Now all we have to do is wait for it to be added to the database

As always:
1. create corresponding folders in your MA pictures folder
2. if necessary, adjust the path name within the script to match the location of your MA folder
3. rename the script from *.txt to *.ps1
4. run with PowerShell to start downloading
5. after download, search and replace all occurrences of "(" and ")" with "[" and "]". (Easiest done with "PowerRename", which is part of Microsoft Power Toys)

To run the script in windows 10/11 right click on the file and select "Run with Powershell, after editing your file and making the directories.

Enjoy

Attachment

@Atheling013: hehe, nice work

@all: Now that the new database update is out, I will add the new picture download for NEO and so on in the next days... or maybe Atheling013 will be faster?

...and here we go: NEO / NEC / PNEO download scripts!

(you know how to do it)

Hey @Topace, thanks for these scripts! Just a suggestion to make things easier on our side:

Invoke-WebRequest "https://..." -OutFile ( New-Item -Path "C:\..." -Force )

Can you add that to the lines you generate? This will make it so we don't have to create the new directory manually each time.



Edit:

Can also handle the renaming at the end of the script after all the pictures are downloaded with something like this:

Get-ChildItem "C:\Program Files (x86)\Magic Album\Pictures\Expansions\Adventures in the Forgotten Realms\ENG\*(*" | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\(','[' }
Get-ChildItem "C:\Program Files (x86)\Magic Album\Pictures\Expansions\Adventures in the Forgotten Realms\ENG\*)*" | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '\)',']' }

Here are the download scripts for New Capenna + Commander + Promos.

Many thanks to Nexensis for the additions! I included the new parts and so you no longer have to manually create folders or rename files!

What remains to be done manually is:
a) if necessary, adjust the path name within the script to match the location of your MA folder
b) rename the script from *.txt to *.ps1
c) run with PowerShell to start downloading

Many Thanks to Daniel for the last upate!

Here are the download scripts for most of the new integrated sets.

...what you will have to do:
a) if necessary, adjust the path name within the scripts to match the location of your MA folder
b) rename the script from *.txt to *.ps1
c) run with PowerShell to start downloading