Open Source Vector Playing Cards Download Link

[Chris Aguilar]

A while back, I wanted vector playing card faces (traditional) and all I could find that were free were simply crap. And seeing how I'm a cheap bastard, I didn't want to buy them either.

So for the sake of every else out there (and to hone my vector image creation skills), I've created a complete set and offer them under an "attribution type" open source license.

Essentially these high quality images are completely free to use as long as one complies with the need to properly credit/attribute the set as part of their project (per the formal attributions set up in the download documents)

The graphics library can be found here:

http://sourceforge.net/p/vector-cards/home/

If anyone has any comments, suggestions, or just wants to let me know if these were useful to them, this is the place to do it.

Chris

[Chris Aguilar]

For those of you who frequent European magic boards, could I talk you into posting the above information?

I'd really like those who might not be members here (or at the cafe where I also posted) to be able to enjoy/use these.

Thanks!

[Chris Aguilar]

Oh, there are also black and white (high contrast) and grayscale versions of the cards available at the same link.

[Chris Aguilar]

Version 1.1 has been released.

Fixed QH and new ESP card set.

[Chris Aguilar]

Version 1.2 has been released (same download link as above)

Primarily, an additional set of the separate cards is now offered without crop marks.

[Chris Aguilar]

Version 1.3 Released.

Some further clean up/optimization of the court cards.
Licensing documents (Free GPL based) reorganized and clarified.

For the 1.4 release (3-4 months away) - Shooting to have a few more backs to offer, a few with simple patterns and at least one that's a bit fancier.

Long term update plan is to optimize the very detailed current set to add an additional simpler set that will look good on mobile devices (iphones, android phones, etc).

[AMCabral]

A designer friend of mine passed on a link to a design website discussing playing cards. Guess whose images they're using?

http://designshack.net/articles/layouts ... ing-cards/

Nice one, Chris.

-T

[Chris Aguilar]

The owner of that design site was really nice and e-mailed me right before he posted that up. I'm a bit biased, but I think the card graphics turned out pretty well for his article.

The set has been a lot more popular than I thought it would be. It's been downloaded 2000+ times from something like 20-30 different countries. I've gotten some really nice e-mails of people using them in ipad games, for library projects, programming projects, and someone even managed to squeeze them on to an iphone. And at least one set of magic notes, but I can't remember who that was.

[Chris Aguilar]

As I suspected might happen, I've had all kinds of people getting back to me telling me how they have used these free card graphics.

Librarians using them to decorate for events, programmers using them in card games on the iphone and ipad, at least one use in a set of card notes, a guy who made vinyl decals out of them, and many more.

But this next guy tested the limits of vector printing. Because of their nature, vectors can be printed at any size without loss of detail. The downside is that printing at that size shows even the smallest flaw. I continually tweak the set to mitigate this, so it's great to see how nice the King of Spades looks on top of this mini cooper.

Here is a link to a small gallery with 5-6 images.

[Chris Aguilar]

This guy made a very pretty wood type image using one of the vector card graphics.

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/king ... pedro.html