Magic Set Editor In-depth Yu-Gi-Oh Tutorial With Images

[Zazubat]

I personally prefer the MSE, because it makes the cards look as realistic as possible. It's also very customizable compaired to others, and doesn't require an internet connection to use, so you won't ever run into problems such as image hosting sites being down, so your image is either broken, or that your cards require an account, if lost or hacked etc. Of course it's personal choice which you want, and I'm not here to convince you to use it, but if you're having problems with YCM's creato, or you want better looking cards, this should help you. Anyways here's the tutorial:

Step 1. Downloading. Since I'm on a Windows 7 Computer, I'll be downloading the one for Windows, which you can simply get by clicking this link

Step 2. Installing the program. Install your program. Should be pretty simple, just do what it tells you to do.

Step 3. Starting the program. Open the program, afterwards you will see this:

If it's your first time using, you won't see "Last opened set". If you're starting a new set, click "New Set". Then a new window will pop up. Make sure you have the Yu-Gi-Oh! option clicked, since that's what we're going to be working with. Then click OK:


Step 4. The Program. You will see an empty screen and a card with no text and not image, though yours might look a tiny bit different, though this is typicly how it should look:

Before we go any further, there's a few things that I personally think you should change right away. Go to "Style" at the top. Yours again might look a bit different. However, what you want to change is the "Rules alignment". Make sure you have it on "Not justified", otherwise it will look bad:

Let's show an example of what I mean:

The last thing you should change is in Preferences. Click "Edit" and then "Preferences". Then click "Display":

Here you want to take all off as I have done and keep those I have, of course if you're new you might want to change it so can see the things to change, but after a while it will get annoying, so just turn it off. That's all for options. You don't have to do this every time, however setting your info is specific to your "Set". This will appear on all the cards in that set, and you will have to make a new "Set" if you want to change this.

5. Image. Your first thing is to find an image. Just get one online, or if you have a drawn one yourself, you can use that. Double click on the white and gray part of the card where the image should be. It will bring up a window, where you can then search for where you image is. I have mine in a folder with all my other images, but it doens't matter if you move the images afterwards, so all my used images are in my "Used Images" folder, where I'm going to pick one out:

Double click the image you need, and it should bring up this:

Typicly here you need to scale and size your image to fit the square like dimension of the image, however since my image is already a sqaure, anything that has the same pixels, both width and hieght will not have to be scaled down, and will always look the best. This image is 506x506, so no scaling needed. You can always scale it if you want, though in this case, all we're going to do is to sharpen it a bit. Drag the "Sharpen filter" all the way to the left for the clearest image. You can mess around with that, but dragging it more to the right will make your image look weird. Here's how your card will look after the image has been put in:

You might find that your image is a bit fuzzy now. You will see a little bit lower resolution still, but typicly it's a problem with the JPEG itself. Using PNG files should make it more clear, however it's typicly not that noticable. Zooming all the way in is however. We're actually going to use an other picture, this one is a PGN, however it's not a square, so it will have to be scaled. You can change your image at any time, simply follow the process again by double clicking your image:

Afterwards, you now need to scale it. As you can see, the square around the image is 800x800, but the image is 800x912:

You can either choose to leave it as it is, or pull the square down. You could also change it so it would "squish" the image to full, however that looks really bad. Click the "Force to Fit" button if you really need it to fit. This image is not so bad, however with others that are higher or weighter, they might look really bad. You can also make the square smaller, but it will typicly lose quality too. Here's how it looks after scaling it down:

Not bad, but not all of the image is present, so choose your images with care if you want specific parts to be visible without also making it look bad.

6.Text and more! The first thing to do is to write the name, at least that's what I always do. Your name can be up pretty much as long as you want, however it might make it really small. You cannot use the number sign as seen on a few cards, but you can use qoutes and dashes, question marks and explanation marks and more. Though typicly only use dashes and commas in your name. Anyways, let's give htis card the name "Water Mages of Wisdom", though not very creative, try not to make it longer than 10 words, otherwise it might be squished together and not look right. Also, when naming cards, make sure to use to them, not bold or in italic, otherwise it might look weird. Also use lowercase when you use "of", "and" "the" etc.:

After that it would be a good idea to put Attribute and Type and Subtype if any. Clicking right after the name should bring up a choice of 9. You should not use Spell and Trap for monster though, unless you're making a joke card. For this card, WATER is a good choice since our image has water in it, and the card name has water it in:

Click that, and an icon should appear to the right of your card name. Now this is typicly where I would change how the card looks. This can be done by double clicking on the site of the image, or by choosing a Sub-Type for it. Note that you can't choose Spell or Trap by going into types, only monster types, so if you want Spell or Trap cards you will have to double click on the site like so:

We're going to actually make this an Xyz Monster this time. Why? It's to show something when you choose Sub-Types. Anyways, see the parentheses? When you hover over those, a little arrow will appear. Click that, and you will get all Types. Then you can choose one. We're going to make a Spellcaster this time:

Now go to the right of where SPELLCASTER should have appeared, and you will see an other arrow. Again click that and you will get a bunch of subtypes. What is useful to know here is that when you have an Extra Deck Monster, that card will always have both it's Card Type (in this case Xyz, also Ritual is like this as well, even though it's not an Extra Deck monster, it does work the same way. Note that requiresment are not the same as an effect, so Xyz Materials, Synchro Materials, Fusion Materials, and monster required to Summmon a Ritual Monster does NOT make it have an effect, so don't put effect in if you're making it a "generic monster") and it will also say EFFECT after it, if it has any. Make sure you always put the Extra Deck Monster Type first, and then effect like so:

An other thing to remember is that Tuner/Sprit/Gemini/Toon and Union do not have EFFECT after it, even if it has an effect that is not tied to it's Sub-Type. Anyways, the next step might be to add ATK and DEF values. It's simply done by typing it in. Click the empty space, and type it in, but it should be said that you can only use 0-9, or at least should only, since it would look silly otherwise:

After that, type in your effect. Remember that you should never put your effect in Bold or Ilatic, simply take those off as the program will make sure that if it's a Normal Monster that it will have Italic text:

After this you have your card, though at this point you might want to add it's Level or Rank. Click where the empty space above the image, then click the askerisk (also called star) button on your keyboard. It should add those in:


Step 7. The extra touch. To make your card look like it's a real card, what you can do is to add a card number and a creator name. At the bottom left corner there is an empty space, click that. Type in a random 8 digit number:

In the bottom right corner, there's an empty space. Here you can type in what ever you want, though on real cards, you will see a copyright circle, a year and a name in all caps. So let's try to look like that a bit:

You might also want the LIMTED EDITON or 1ST EDITION, however I am unable to find a proper font to use here, though it should be easy enough to find yourself if you really need that.

Step 8. Spell and Trap cards and multiple cards. We're not actually quite done yet. Making Spells and Traps is somewhat different. While the whole process of images name and attribute (in this case if it's a Spell or a Trap card) is the same, so is the extra info, however there's something else to it. So let's make a new card. To make a new card in the same set, simply click the card with the green plus sign over it, or click the arrrow to the right of it:

After that a new blank card should show up like so:

As you can see, it's pretty much the same, however there's now no arrows and there's now parentheses where the Level/Rank should be and the only thing that isn't on a completly blank card is your Code and Language. Also, you can at any time switch between cards, simply click the name in the box where you see "Name" "Attribute" and so on. Now just put in a new picture. Then click to the right of the picture again, and choose either Spell or Trap card. We're going to use Spell at this time, though it doesn't matter as it is the same process:

After you got your picture and text and such in there, which is the same process as with monsters, except you don't need to put in a Type or Sub-Type as Spells and Traps doesn't have that. Now what you want to do is to go to the parentheses, and type in "*space* Spell Card (or Trap Card) *Spell/Trap Card Type)* *space*
This way it will looks mostly like it does in real life, though it's not 100 % perfect, but the closest you can get. Now for the little icons you can choose from, there's of course askerisk, but that's only for monsters, % will make a continuous icon, ! will make a counter icon (only for Trap Cards) + will make an Equip Sign (which is the one we're using) & will make a field icon, $ will make quickplay and last but not least # will make the ritual icon. For Normal Spell and Trap cards, simply don't use it at all, and make sure you only have 1 space after "Card" to make it look right:

Let's also make a Trap Card, just to show that it can only do that. As before, click the card with the green plus sign to make a new card. Click to the right where there is nothing else in the way, choose Trap Card. And do the same as before:

Step 9. Exporting images. To export an image (or all images) click the file icon with the arrow and save icon. There's 2 ways to easily save your cards as images. One is to do 1 by 1 manually, but if you want more faster, click All Card Images:

Then this should pop up. Make sure that you don't change this "{card.name}.png" otherwise it will not work smoothly for all files. Have "Overwrite old files" on if needed. Entire set of course, then click OK:

After that a window should pop up. Choose where to save your cards. I'll put them in my folder where I have all my other cards:

After that you're done! Now upload them to your favorite image sharing site like Imgur or Photobucket. When you have uploaded it, go find the IMG Code. On Photobucket, you click the little cog, and then "Get media links" and click the IMG code at the bottom:

Then post that in your forum post, and get all the 10/10s!

MSE has other features too, such as statistics, but for simply making and posting cards, that's all you got to do.

Additional things to make your cards look better:
Most of the time, you will see that your font doesn't look good. To fix this, simply go to your prefered search site, search and download all of these:
MatrixRegularSmallCaps
MatrixBoldSmallCaps
Matrix-Bold
MatrixBook
Palatino Linotype
BankGothic Md BT

As they were somewhat hard to find, I dn't have links for them. If I can find them again, I'll post links, but for now simply search for them.


In case you want your Synchro and Xyz Monsters, here's two links to do just that: http://mtg.pifro.com....php?f=20&t=497 & http://www.mediafire...crlitq079fd8ptt
To install these, simply replace the old files with the new and it should automatically give you the options.

This is my first tutorial, so sorry for the notepad appearing in some of the images, I was taking notes while I was taking the pictures :D Also, if you got any questions, or anything you don't understand, simply post and I'll try to help you.

 

EDIT: Have been looking into Justified and not Justified, and it seems that the original cards use the Justified and it while I personally don't like it, I am using it now instead of the other, and it can look good.

Finished Cards:

[Judαs]

Wow this is a really in-depth tutorial. I personally don't use this program, but this is very well written, +1

 

Although I really, really don't get why you would disable Justified. It ruins the whole reason why this program could be better than all the other automatic card generators out there, besides real Yu-Gi-Oh cards look like that.

EDIT: Can you easily make your own templates for this? I was thinking of customising my template to work with this program so you can make HQ cards easily.

[Kyng's Old Account]

Downloaded it to test, everything is fine, however unlike you I do not have the option for Xyz Monsters. ???

[Zazubat]

Wow this is a really in-depth tutorial. I personally don't use this program, but this is very well written, +1

 

Although I really, really don't get why you would disable Justified. It ruins the whole reason why this program could be better than all the other automatic card generators out there, besides real Yu-Gi-Oh cards look like that.

EDIT: Can you easily make your own templates for this? I was thinking of customising my template to work with this program so you can make HQ cards easily.

It's personaly prefrence, I just don't like the wall of text, you can have it on that if you want. For your template question, I don't know, but if you go to the MSE forums, they should probably be able to help you. EDIT: Having tried it for a while, I agree that it can look good. So use it if you wish for more realistic cards.

 

Downloaded it to test, everything is fine, however unlike you I do not have the option for Xyz Monsters. ???

Here you go. You may not have noticed, but I have a link to both Synchros and Xyz Monsters at the bottom of the page. http://www.mediafire.com/?crlitq079fd8ptt

[cr47t]

Good idea, but you should also let us create our own Types in the new Cardmaker. (if the new Cardmaker is what this thread is about... im confused)

[Zazubat]

[quote name="cr47t" post="6139545" timestamp="1360330537"]Good idea, but you should also let us create our own Types in the new Cardmaker. (if the new Cardmaker is what this thread is about... im confused)[/quote] If you think I created this card maker, then you're wrong. Now for custom types, if I recall right, you can delete what's in your type box.

[Zero Aiser]

dude its all great but how did you use the lowercase capital letters in the title of the cards. When I wrote the names of the cards I suposed that the program would turn the lowercase letters into lowercase capital letters but it didnt. Please help man.

[Zazubat]

Do you use Caps Lock? You only need to use an uppercase letter on first letter, then turn Caps Lock off, and type the rest. That's all I can say, as I don't know if there's a different problem. If you had an image, I could probably help you more.

[ZaneKaiba09]

Is there a way to fix the text?

[Zazubat]

[quote name="ZaneKaiba09" post="6226359" timestamp="1371831802"]Is there a way to fix the text?[/quote] You have to be more infomative than that for me to be able to help you.

[ORION]

the only downside to this is that the cards will be in a fixed ordering system

[Generaxius]

Do u notice the TST - EN001 can u tell me how to write it i can't click on it and i can't write my set #.

Please help me, in ur tutorial when u pick a pic. it just change!!!