Topic: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

Hello,

Today's update includes a brand new Premium feature: uploading card photos or scans. It's now easier than ever to take some pics of your cards so other traders know what you're getting!

The feature is accessible from inventory and tradelist listings, clicking on the camera icon on the card row. Since this will mostly be used for trading and selling, the photo dialog is also conveniently accessible from the trade and order listing. This way, you can upload a picture directly when chatting with your trade partner about the cards.
 
Of course, the quickest way people take photos nowadays is via smartphones, so the mobile view also has a button for adding photos when viewing your inventory or tradelist. Clicking upload photo here will automatically open your camera app to take a photo to attach in one click.

Let us know what you think, and if the feature works ok for you. As always, feedback is appreciated.

There is a soft quota of 1Gb of photos per user, to avoid abuse, but if you reach that, a simple mail to support@deckbox.org will be enough to receive more space.


Next Steps

This feature opens the way to exciting things. We wanted for a while now to offer the option of a smartphone application that would use the camera to recognize cards and add them to inventories, decks, etc. I'm already investigating some options for an Android application, there will be more details in a few weeks if someone wishes to try out a development version and see what they think.


Eternal Masters

The import for Eternal Masters is also coming later today or tommorow. As usual, I waited for Gatherer to list the official set before importing it. I might take a look at other better sources for future sets, since people are always wishing for the new card data to become available as soon as spoilers hit...

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

Whoa, this is great. imo *this* is the best killer app for premium traders. I can finally upload pictures of my shitty Mox Pearl instead of having to send them to each user who inquires about it.

Photos are attached to a given inventory row. Question: What happens to the photos when I trade a card or remove a row with attached photos? Are they removed from my storage limit?

And not to rain on the parade, but imo this feature really underscores the fundamental need that Deckbox has to restructure its database so that each entry is an individual *card*, not a quantity listing. If I have 2 Plateaus and want to upload pictures and trade, I should be able to have 2 listings each with their own pictures. Not one listing with 2 pictures and then someone will have to say "hey send me that one." But I realize that this is a much deeper change to implement... but it really should be done.

That does lead to a thought, though: Can you make it so that users can add captions and/or notes to photos? Right now you can see the photo names, but you can't edit them or anything. It would be better if the user could provide their own labels. Shouldn't be too hard to implement, right?

Last edited by 9700377 (2016-06-07 16:59:53)

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

9700377 wrote:

And not to rain on the parade, but imo this feature really underscores the fundamental need that Deckbox has to restructure its database so that each entry is an individual *card*, not a quantity listing.

This was my first thought - the cart is coming before the horse.

That said this is awesome and I appreciate the effort Sebi! Look forward to trying it out soon.

Profile | Cards for Sale

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

9700377 wrote:

And not to rain on the parade, but imo this feature really underscores the fundamental need that Deckbox has to restructure its database so that each entry is an individual *card*, not a quantity listing. If I have 2 Plateaus and want to upload pictures and trade, I should be able to have 2 listings each with their own pictures.

This is not such a big problem, only it was not needed until now. You can already split a stack of 2 and set different properties on each. I will make it work for photos and notes too, no problem.

That does lead to a thought, though: Can you make it so that users can add captions and/or notes to photos? Right now you can see the photo names, but you can't edit them or anything. It would be better if the user could provide their own labels. Shouldn't be too hard to implement, right?

Next up are notes on cards, users (and myself too!) wanted that for a very long time. That should solve some of the usecases mentioned. Captions on photos might also make sense as an extra, although I'm not sure if that's not over complicating things...

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

I think you should at least be able to rename photos from the default, to allow users to point to "Plateau #1" instead of "Plateau #2" without your having to actually upload a file called "Plateau_2" or something. I don't want to tell stories about cards, but if I have multiple copies under the same listing I want to at least have a way of indicating which is which.

Also, one other important thing that I can't do under the current database settings is make it so that if I have 2 copies of Plateau, perhaps I only want to put one up for sale but not the other while also having both on my tradelist. Right now you can't do this, let alone do something like have different prices on different copies, which becomes more-rationalizable if you can upload different pictures on different copies.

Right now I do this in a janky way: If I have 2 Plateaus on my tradelist and I only want to have one up for sale, then I just remove the condition from the one I don't want to sell to force the Plateaus onto 2 separate rows. Stupid, but it works.

Last edited by 9700377 (2016-06-07 17:38:04)

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

sounds wonderful. is there ever gonna be an edh format for deck making?

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

gunpocket wrote:

is there ever gonna be an edh format for deck making?

There already is. Update looks great, Sebi!

Profile  Tradelist

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

Kammikaze wrote:
gunpocket wrote:

is there ever gonna be an edh format for deck making?

There already is. Update looks great, Sebi!

oh, im blind. thanks!

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

Another comment on this feature: I don't like how it automatically crops images. I'm not sure what the point of it is but I feel like it might be a problem if people don't know to click on the cropped versions in order to see the full version. Why crop rather than resize the image to meet some size limit?

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

9700377 wrote:

Another comment on this feature: I don't like how it automatically crops images. I'm not sure what the point of it is but I feel like it might be a problem if people don't know to click on the cropped versions in order to see the full version. Why crop rather than resize the image to meet some size limit?

Looks like the preview is getting cropped, will check it out. If you click on Show Original though, the image is there in full. I will fix the existing images too automatically I hope.

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

Awesome feature.
I'd like to test the android application whenever smile

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

This is a sweet update, thank you! I am an Android user and would be willing to test the app if you need testers. Running an LG G2 on Verizon network with Android 5.0.2.

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Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

Fixed the cropping issue, the image previews in the dialog should not be cropped anymore but shown properly resized.

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

When viewing an image, the close button on the bottom left was unintuitive for me - was expecting to close the image with a button in the top right or by simply clicking off the image.

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Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

On Safari on iPhone, the mobile version does not have an option to attach an image.

Re: New Feature: Upload card photos & scans

Wow, a feature that actually makes me want premium!  Good job!

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