Recommended Card Resolution?

[Tomsde]

I have commenced work on my Toon Tarot and wondered if anyone knew the reccomended image size or resolution for an average sized Tarot Card. Any insights that you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

[starlightexp]

If you are looking at publishing, it might be best to look at publisher sites to know what they require. If you are using a standard Poker or Bridge size it will be pretty easy to find. Are you thinking of line the RWS size? that might require a special die-cut and be cost prohibitive. Check the dimension of some of the Print one Demand places to give yourself an idea.

[HudsonGray]

Carta Mundi is in the US as well as Europe, here's their page for card info, they do tarot decks.
http://www.cartamundiusa.com/Content...l/1/index.html

If you email them they have a form they send via email with all the details on for tarot.

[tarotlyn]

...at the bottom is a phone number...

http://www.cartamundiusa.com/Media/c...matsub2007.pdf

Lyn

ETA: For TGC print on demand tarot cards, their template size is:
900 x 1500 pixles... set at 300 dpi

Here is a link to their template info:
https://community.thegamecrafter.com...ds/tarot-cards

[Tomsde]

Thanks for your input. I think it would be best to create the masters at a higher resolution and then I can lower it if need be to fit a particular template. Since things don't enlarge well digitally, it's always better to reduce rather than increase size.

[tarotlyn]

You have it exactly right...it happened to me when i made my bear deck...i made
all the images, then i found out the templates were so much larger and it was a problem
reworking all the '78' cards to make them fit the larger size as it does distort the image.
i ended up having to totally remake several of my cards in that deck.

Good thinking to figure this out in the beginning! Most of my earthly lessons were learned the hard way!
That is why i wanted to share with you and help you learn that easier than i did.

Good luck with your deck project!
HUGS
Lyn

[starlightexp]

Originally Posted by Tomsde

Thanks for your input. I think it would be best to create the masters at a higher resolution and then I can lower it if need be to fit a particular template. Since things don't enlarge well digitally, it's always better to reduce rather than increase size.

100% agree. but it would be good to make sure the aspect ratio you are making is something you can replicate as well. Regardless how big the file is if you find that the ratio is off your image will look squashed down or thinned out. Several people here have had that issue. I loved the preview of the Toon Tarot that you posted a while back

[Tomsde]

starlight good point. What I have done is take the aspect ratio of a typical tarot card from the Quick Cards website and tripled the image size while maintaining the aspect ratio. This way I can create a print that would be suitable for sale as a decorative print (like Paulina Cassidy has done with her cards, selling prints of them on her website), a calendar, or magazine article. One of my cards was used in Major Tom's Tarot Calendar a number of years ago and I had difficulty upsampling them to a decent print size. I shouldn't have that problem this time.

[bogiesan]

As a video producer, I constantly battle with print people about resolution and pixel density. They are not the same things. Video is a defined area containing a certain number of discrete pixels. High definition vidoe space is a window that is 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels high. If you put a 3000x4000 pixel image in that window, you either scale it down to fit (and throw away all of your resolution) or you only get to see 1920x1080 pixels of the 3kx4k image.
If you scale the image to fit the window, your software, and your ability to drive it, you must understand what you give up when you scale down.

If you are going to be downscaling, and therefore down-rezing, your images by a factor of 3-to-1, you must be conscious of the mechanisms involved. For instance, if you have drawn a line that is 2 pixels wide in the original, when you downscale that line, the line may actually disappear since the resolution of your target file is only 33% of the original.

So your originals might be a bit over the top and bold in order to maintain your design's integrity as it is diminished in size.

Let's say your target output it a 3x5 inch card on a 150dpi system. Regardless of your original's size or pixel density, your printed card will have only 450x750 discrete pixels, about 68,000 units. If you have access to a printing shop that uses a 600dpi printer, you will enjoy 1800x3000 individual pixels, 5 million units!

I suggest you carefully print each and every one of your cards at the target pixel density that your printer will be using and examine them under a loupe.

[Tomsde]

Perhaps doubling the original size would work out better. A little foresight now can save a lot of difficulties later. Upscaling though is where one usually loses a lot of detail and you have to interpolate for missing pixels. I just want to have options. I am not certain what the actual size of the finished card will be if I am fortunate enough to have a publisher print it. If I am going to self publish I would like a larger sized card rather than a smaller one.

Working with 3D CG images however I will have the original files and can always render a larger image later down the road if one is required for a specific project--it's just the other graphical elements would have to be recreated, which can be time consuming. I can, however, experiment with my first card and downsize it in Photoshop and select "Print Size" to get an idea wheather it will look acceptable at what I consider to be the smallest size I'd like the work with.

If I don't have a publisher interested I will create a prototype deck with Quick Cards and the starting size. Unfortunately the cost of the blanks and ink would make it prohibitive cost wise to create custom decks for people and produce and sell them myself. So I will have to find a company I can get to print my decks at a price where I can still make some money on each deck sold.