Tarot's Digital Evolution. Call for Ideas, Suggestions, Likes & Dislikes

ficbot said:

I don't want to crop the card though. I want to trim off the non-card parts. I put the card on the table, I snap the pic, you can see the table. I have tried zooming in with the camera, zooming out, trying different angles. It still happens. I need to manually trim the sides. Doing it through the camera app makes importing into your app very slow and clunky. This seems like such a simple thing to me

Your app does have some nice features but the killer one to me would be to be able to scan my decks and use them on the go. A simple grab bar to let me trim the borders in-app would make your app my go-to. It's not quite there yet but it could be.

Click to expand...

Ah, I think I understand now what the issue is.
It's a direct consequence of the fixed card dimensions ratio.
If your cards are not w=1/h=(w*1.618) then photographing them is going to mess up edges.

The camera option was intended more for creating your own pictorial Tarot deck than for "scanning in" cards.
I've seen a few attempts at creating a tarot deck with photography and it's intriguing.
For example, something I've wondered is how well Tarot would work if you replaced the court cards with photo's of people you know who match those card character characteristics.

For uploading a printed deck, that you own, my intention was for the user to use the other 2 options, not the camera.
The camera does a rough job at best.

My personal preference is for using Dropbox.
I scan in the cards using a scanner and save them all in a dropbox folder, naming each image file after the card to make it easier to find.
Even if the card images aren't in the correct ratio the App will stretch/squeeze to fit nicely within.

As I said I want to deter piracy of Tarot decks.
If I make it too easy to load in a deck then before long we'll see Tarot decks on torrent sites either ready to load into Apps or bundled as zipped up images.

There is a strong parallel between Digital Tarot and what happened in Music.
Ripping your own CD's, that you'd bought, to play on an MP3 player isn't much different from scanning in Tarot Decks and loading them into an App.
I have no intention of opening Pandora's box with my App.

Which brings me to my recent post on this very topic of publishers and artists selling their decks on multiple Apps and not just one.
I won't make my App a Tarot "MP3 player" but someone else might and then the Deck market may well go he same direction as the music industry went.
It would be better, I think, for publishers to take the lead here and allow App developers to sell their decks in their Apps.
The Music model did prove that people will pay for quality package products over stolen rip offs

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=241294

Callanish

Thank you for your reply. I tried the Dropbox option you mention and it was a bit easier now, I am wondering if I can use iCloud to send it to my other iPad?

I probably will not scan further decks; it took a long time But I think if you did add a feature to compare cards from all the installed decks, you could make this app a great learning tool. That is what I am using apps for right now. It is useful to be able to tap and see the meanings when you are just starting out. And I like doing daily one-card draws which each if my installed tarot apps just to immerse myself in one card for a few minutes.

ficbot said:

Thank you for your reply. I tried the Dropbox option you mention and it was a bit easier now, I am wondering if I can use iCloud to send it to my other iPad?

I probably will not scan further decks; it took a long time But I think if you did add a feature to compare cards from all the installed decks, you could make this app a great learning tool. That is what I am using apps for right now. It is useful to be able to tap and see the meanings when you are just starting out. And I like doing daily one-card draws which each if my installed tarot apps just to immerse myself in one card for a few minutes.

Click to expand...

At the moment, no, there is no way to get a deck you've created from one device onto another device using icloud sharing.
It's on my to do list though as you are the 2nd person to request it.

The next release, when I get time to move onto it, will have a re-write of all iCloud sharing functionality.
The saved spreads sharing needs re-worked.
If I can find an elegant way of sharing, without opening the App up to piracy, then I'll add this in the next release.

If you like the one card a day learning then try using the spread "Week Ahead (Mon-Sun)" under Forecasting.
If you draw this spread every weekend you'll get a notification of your card for that day each day.
I use it myself and love it. As you said it's good to have a card to contemplate each day as part of your own learning and development.
It's become even better since iOS8 introduced the "Today" widgets in the pull down notifications view.
If you go to the end of the "Today" view and hit "Edit" you can add the "Tarot & Numerology Forecaster".
This way all you need to do to see your card for today is drag your finger from the top of the screen down.

Love your idea of card comparing across decks, it's definitely going into the next release!

Callanish

Now, I don't have anything capable of running tarot apps right now (it's on my list - once I get a student card next month) so it's all hypothetical for me right now.

But when I was doing a daily draw I found it really helpful to be able to set it as the background screen on my phone. So having a way to reference your card of the day - without opening the app - (ie being able to set it somewhere) is nice. I had to take pictures. Obviously not needing to take pictures would be a direct advantage to app use.

AnemoneRosie said:

Now, I don't have anything capable of running tarot apps right now (it's on my list - once I get a student card next month) so it's all hypothetical for me right now.

But when I was doing a daily draw I found it really helpful to be able to set it as the background screen on my phone. So having a way to reference your card of the day - without opening the app - (ie being able to set it somewhere) is nice. I had to take pictures. Obviously not needing to take pictures would be a direct advantage to app use.

Click to expand...

On android phones there is something already like this in what's called widgets that can be placed/docked on the phone's screen. Tarot apps from fools dog and galaxy have this feature for card of the day.

Along these lines, a three card today card for morning afternoon and evening would be interesting [emoji3]

ficbot said:

Callanish, I do have your app and have been playing around with it. Two suggestions I have for you:
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2) I would love to have a deck comparison feature where I can choose a card, and browse/see all the versions of it for every deck I have installed. I am still learning all the symbols and imagery. It would be so helpful to be able to pick a card and compare the different versions of it.

It is a great start for a tarot app. I just was really disappointed with the app creation feature. Way too much going back and forth between different windows, losing my spot and having to go back to where I was. Could be much better.

Click to expand...

I've just written this feature into the App this afternoon and it works really nicely I think.
Thank's for the great suggestion.
Anyone (ficbot?) want to try a beta copy of the App before letting it lose on the world?
It'll be a few more weeks, probably November, before it goes out as a real release.
P.M. me if interested.

Callanish

I would love for a Tarot app to be able to highlight relationships between the cards in a spread. There are so many things to watch out for in a reading aside from which card pops up in which position. I would love a Tarot app that could alert the reader, automatically or on request if the following conditions are present in a spread:

- strong elemental dignities
- a strong presence of a particular type of card, such as a lot of court members, a particular number group, or a lot of majors
- a recurrence of certain symbols, such as the lemniscate, black/white dualities, wreaths and flowers, animals, etc.
- a dominant color or directionality

Using the multi-touch gesture capabilities of most mobile devices, there are a variety of ways that these menus/interfaces could be accessed and taken note of. The digital medium would definitely be able to bring focus to these aspects of Tarot reading in a way that is impossible with physical Tarot reading.

lotusindigo said:

I would love for a Tarot app to be able to highlight relationships between the cards in a spread. There are so many things to watch out for in a reading aside from which card pops up in which position. I would love a Tarot app that could alert the reader, automatically or on request if the following conditions are present in a spread:

- strong elemental dignities
- a strong presence of a particular type of card, such as a lot of court members, a particular number group, or a lot of majors
- a recurrence of certain symbols, such as the lemniscate, black/white dualities, wreaths and flowers, animals, etc.
- a dominant color or directionality

Using the multi-touch gesture capabilities of most mobile devices, there are a variety of ways that these menus/interfaces could be accessed and taken note of. The digital medium would definitely be able to bring focus to these aspects of Tarot reading in a way that is impossible with physical Tarot reading.

Click to expand...

This is another excellent suggestion which I have had in my head for a while but I've not had time to sit down and work through it properly.

I see it as more of a learning aid for users.
In the App you could switch it into "learner" mode and when viewing a spread you'd get pops up pointing out the things you've listed.
One of my favourite books* on tarot has a great lookup table for multiple cards in a spread.
It's something I'd love to replicate in software.
It's a non-trivial job to do this though as it requires a huge amount of meta information on each individual card.
A lot of data input and some very sophisticate software to present it meaningfully.
You can't beat the human mind well trained which will always be better than software and neither will ever touch the wisdom of intuition.

Callanish

*The book is "Tarot" by Rowenna Stuart in the Collins gem series (it's pocket sized). Page's 55-56. e.g. "Kings x4 - Important meetings, x3 - High status; honours granted, x2 - Business opportunities."

lotusindigo said:

I would love for a Tarot app to be able to highlight relationships between the cards in a spread. There are so many things to watch out for in a reading aside from which card pops up in which position. I would love a Tarot app that could alert the reader, automatically or on request if the following conditions are present in a spread:

- strong elemental dignities
- a strong presence of a particular type of card, such as a lot of court members, a particular number group, or a lot of majors
- a recurrence of certain symbols, such as the lemniscate, black/white dualities, wreaths and flowers, animals, etc.
- a dominant color or directionality

Using the multi-touch gesture capabilities of most mobile devices, there are a variety of ways that these menus/interfaces could be accessed and taken note of. The digital medium would definitely be able to bring focus to these aspects of Tarot reading in a way that is impossible with physical Tarot reading.

Click to expand...

Just a heads up that Galaxy Tarot and other Galaxy Tone apps do this exactly! (It depends on what correspondences and associations the artist has provided for their deck)

We're only on Android right now, but we're coming to iOS soon

That sounds great! I had a look at your website, I look forward to Galaxy Tarot's iOS debut.

Another feature I've been looking for in a Tarot app (and please let me know if one is able to do this already) is the ability to digitally save a reading that had initially been done with physical cards. This would entail being able to manually select specific cards instead of drawing them randomly, and being able to place them in whatever configuration to mimic the spread that was used. The reader could then write notes about their reading.

I know the same thing may be accomplished by taking a photo of a reading, uploading to an app like Evernote and writing notes about the photo. But it can be difficult to take a quality picture of a spread if it involves a lot of cards or if the lighting is poor (such as by candlelight); the image is subject to all the drawbacks of amateur photography. Digital images of the cards would be much clearer, and the reader would have at their disposal whatever features the developer has included into the app; i.e., the ability to tap on a card to zoom into it and view card meanings and associations, the ability to categorize readings, etc.