What to actually study for card design

• Graphic design fundamentals: layout grids, typography, visual hierarchy and working with tight format constraints — a card frame is a tiny poster, and these skills transfer directly.
• Illustration and digital painting: composition, lighting and finishing an image at the size it will be seen — the artwork window on a card is small, and images composed for it read better than cropped large pieces.
• Colour theory: harmony, contrast and using colour as information — directly relevant to mana identity, rarity cues and frame choices in your own designs.

The platforms, by shape

Course pages: Coursera and Udemy are affiliate links (see our affiliate disclosure); Skillshare is mentioned for completeness of the comparison and you can find it by searching its name. On any platform, judge a specific course by its syllabus, its instructor’s portfolio, and whether its project work matches card-sized design — not by a headline rating alone.

A learning order that pays off fastest

• First, design fundamentals: one structured pass over layout, type and hierarchy improves every card you make, including the text-only ones, before you draw anything.
• Then colour: a short colour-theory course changes frame and art choices immediately, and it is the cheapest skill to apply inside MSE itself.
• Then illustration, as a longer project: artwork skill compounds slowly; study it in parallel with designing sets, and use your own cards as the practice projects so every lesson lands on a real frame.
• Throughout, keep designing in MSE: courses without output fade. Each module should end with cards in your set that use it — our first custom set walkthrough is a good scaffold to hang the practice on.

One honest closing note: no course makes a set good by itself, and MSE remains free while you learn. Treat courses as the craft layer on top of the tool — design fundamentals first, and your templates will suddenly look like the limiting factor they no longer are.

Keep reading

• Magic Set Editor vs Photoshop for Custom Cards
• Best Card Sleeves and Binders for Custom Cards
• How to Print Custom MTG Cards

Sleeves: what actually matters for custom cards

• Fit first: standard trading-card sleeves are the category to search for Magic-size cards. A custom card printed slightly thick, or a paper printout over a backing card, sits looser or tighter than a bare card — buy one pack, test the fit with your thickest card, then stock up.
• Finish: sleeves in this category are broadly sold in gloss and matte-style finishes. Gloss shows artwork at full shine; matte-style backs reduce glare and reflections under room light and photographs. Neither is “better” — it is a table and lighting choice.
• Opacity: if you playtest printouts sleeved over backing cards, an opaque back hides the backing card completely, which matters for fair shuffling and for double-faced printouts.
• Quantity maths: count for the deck, a sideboard if you use one, tokens, and spares for splits — then keep the rest of the same purchase together, because feel and height can differ subtly between product lines when you reshuffle a mixed deck.

Browse the category here: card sleeves on Amazon (affiliate link). Search the brand names above within that category if you already have a preference.

Binders: storing sets, proofs and trade stock

• Pocket format: binder pages in this category are sold by how many card pockets fit on a page. Smaller pages suit a curated binder of favourite designs; larger pages suit archiving a whole custom set in order so you can flip through it as a set.
• Side-loading vs top-loading: side-loading pockets hold cards in place when the binder is carried; top-loading pages are the classic format and make swapping order quick while you are still arranging a set.
• Ring binders vs fixed binders: a ring binder with separate pages lets you add, remove and reorder pages as a set grows; a fixed-pocket binder is slimmer and keeps a finished set in a fixed order. Growing custom sets usually favour the reorderable kind.
• Sleeve before you file: binder pockets are storage, not play protection. Sleeve cards that matter before they go into pockets, especially home prints, whose surfaces mark more easily than factory cards.

Browse the category here: card binders on Amazon (affiliate link).

A simple kit for a custom set

• One sleeve purchase sized for your main deck plus spares, tested against your thickest printed card.
• One reorderable binder with enough pages for the whole set in set order — it becomes your design archive and your spoiler gallery in one.
• A small reserve of spare sleeves and pages, because custom sets keep growing after the first print run.

That is genuinely all most designers need. Sleeves and binders are commodity categories with strong brands; fit, opacity and format decide satisfaction far more than chasing a supposed flagship model.

Keep reading

• How to Print Custom MTG Cards
• Learn Card Design Online: Courses Compared
• Magic Set Editor vs Photoshop for Custom Cards

Step 1 — Export at full quality from MSE

Print quality is decided before any printer is involved. Export finished cards as PNG images, as a whole-set batch, at the full resolution your template provides. Resolution in MSE comes from the template, not from a setting in the program, so if your exports look small or soft, fix that first with our high-resolution export guide and our guide to high-resolution templates — printing a low-resolution file larger only makes the softness bigger. Keep front and back images of double-faced cards clearly paired in your file names, and keep the set file and the exports together so you can re-export after corrections.

Step 2 — Think about bleed and colour before you upload or print

Two general print concepts apply on every route below. Bleed: cutters are never perfectly placed, so print files usually extend artwork slightly beyond the finished card edge, and important text and art are kept inside a safe area away from the trim line. Colour: screens show RGB light; printing lays down CMYK ink, and some bright screen colours will print duller — a small proof run is how everyone checks this. Exact file dimensions, bleed amounts and colour settings belong to the printer or service you choose: always follow their own current instructions, not numbers copied from a guide. Our print-preparation guide walks through the MSE side of this step in detail.

Route A — Print at home

Home printing is the fastest and cheapest way to playtest. The common playtest method is to print onto paper, trim, and sleeve the cut-outs over inexpensive backing cards so the deck shuffles and handles like real cards. For nicer home results, a photo printer and glossy photo paper give heavier, glossier stock than plain office paper. If you are shopping for that setup, these are our affiliate links to Amazon searches — the prices and models you will see there are Amazon’s current listings, and we link searches rather than naming a “best” model we have not tested:

• Photo printers on Amazon (affiliate link)
• Glossy photo paper on Amazon (affiliate link)
• Card sleeves on Amazon (affiliate link) — sleeves are what make paper printouts playable, and they protect finished prints afterwards.

Set expectations honestly: home output is for testing and casual play. Ink, paper and hand trimming will not match a factory-printed card, and chasing that last step at home usually costs more than ordering a proof from a service.

Route B — Use a professional print service

For real card stock, accurate cutting and a finished feel, custom-card designers commonly use print-on-demand card services and upload their exported files through the service’s own editor, following that service’s size and bleed instructions. The best-known name in this hobby is MakePlayingCards: MakePlayingCards (MPC). Transparency note: this site currently has no affiliate relationship with MPC — we do not earn a commission if you order there; we list it because it is a commonly used printing service for custom cards, nothing more. Other services in the same space, listed here as ordinary links with no commission relationship either, include BoardGamesMaker, PrintPlayGames and The Game Crafter. Compare each service’s own current card stocks, sizes and instructions on its own site, and — whichever you choose — order a small proof batch before a full set.

Route C — Publish or sell an original design through a print-on-demand ecosystem

A third path is for designers whose goal is not printing their own deck but offering an original game or card product to others. DriveThruCards (affiliate link) is part of the DriveThru family of print-on-demand and digital marketplaces, where creators publish card products that are printed or delivered when someone orders. That is a publishing route for original work, with the marketplace’s own publisher terms — read those terms on its site if this is your goal, and do not confuse it with ordering a private print run of your playtest deck.

Originality and personal use — the boundary

• Print your own original designs, fan designs and parodies for personal, non-commercial play — that is what MSE and this guide are for.
• Do not use a print service to reproduce official card artwork or to make copies intended to pass as genuine cards. Apart from the legal problem, reputable services can refuse or cancel such orders.
• If a card in your set reuses art, use art you made, commissioned with permission, or that is licensed for your use — and credit artists on the card where your template allows it.

Follow the order in this guide — full-quality PNG export, bleed- and colour-aware files, a proof on whichever route you pick — and the printed deck will look like the set you designed.

Keep reading

• Preparing Magic Set Editor Cards for Printing
• Export Higher-Resolution Cards from MSE
• Best Card Sleeves and Binders for Custom Cards

What each program is

Magic Set Editor (MSE) is a free, open-source desktop program released under GPL-2.0, originally written by Twan van Laarhoven. It was designed first for Magic: The Gathering and also supports other games through templates, including Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon and Vs. System. Its unit of work is the set: you build and manage a whole custom set in one file, use its statistics window (such as average mana cost and rarity counts), generate randomized packs and sealed pools, and export cards as png, jpg, bmp or tiff images — individually or as a whole-set batch — as well as to HTML and to play tools such as LackeyCCG and Cockatrice. It runs offline on your own computer, and your project files stay on your own disk.

Photoshop, from Adobe, is a general image editor used across photography, illustration and print design. It knows nothing about Magic cards out of the box — there is no set file, no mana-cost statistics, no card template system waiting for you — but it can edit any image at a professional level, layer by layer. If you want to explore Adobe’s current Creative Cloud offer, see Adobe Creative Cloud (affiliate link — see our affiliate disclosure). We do not quote Adobe prices here because they vary by plan and region; check Adobe’s own page for current terms.

Where Photoshop is genuinely stronger

• Print preparation: commercial printing works in CMYK ink colour, with bleed and trim areas. Converting and proofing an image in CMYK, extending artwork into a bleed area, and checking that nothing important sits in the trim zone are classic prepress jobs, and a full image editor is the right tool for them. MSE exports screen images; it is not a prepress program.
• Original artwork and frames: painting custom art, compositing photos, building a one-off frame treatment or cleaning up a scan are general image-editing work. MSE places artwork into templates; it does not create the artwork.
• Per-card polish: if one showcase card deserves hand-tuned levels, masking and retouching, an image editor works at that pixel level in a way a template editor is not trying to.

Where MSE is genuinely stronger

• Whole-set workflow: hundreds of cards sharing frames, fonts and symbols, with statistics for balance, randomized packs for testing, and a whole-set batch export at the end. Doing that card-by-card in a general editor means reinventing the system by hand.
• Card-aware editing: rules text, mana symbols, rarity and set symbols are structured fields in MSE, placed by templates that were built for cards — including the community template packs that keep adding newer frames.
• Cost and openness: MSE is free and open source under GPL-2.0. There is no subscription decision to make before your first set.

A sensible combined workflow

• Design in MSE: build the set, balance it with the statistics window, and export PNG images at your template’s full quality — our high-resolution export guide explains why the template decides the resolution.
• Prepare for print as needed: for a professional print run, use a full image editor for the CMYK and bleed checks described in our print-preparation guide, following your chosen print service’s own current specifications.
• Print a proof first: whichever route you take, proof a small batch before committing a whole set — colour shifts between screen and ink are normal, and a proof is how you catch them cheaply.

Bottom line: if you only make custom cards, MSE alone will carry you a long way for free. Photoshop earns its place when you step into original art and print-shop colour work — as a partner to MSE, not a replacement for it.

Keep reading

• Magic Set Editor vs CardConjurer
• Preparing Magic Set Editor Cards for Printing
• How to Print Custom MTG Cards

The MSE side

Magic Set Editor (MSE) is a free, open-source desktop program released under GPL-2.0, originally written by Twan van Laarhoven. It was designed first for Magic: The Gathering and also supports other games through templates, including Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon and Vs. System. Its unit of work is the set: you build and manage a whole custom set in one file, use its statistics window (such as average mana cost and rarity counts), generate randomized packs and sealed pools, and export cards as png, jpg, bmp or tiff images — individually or as a whole-set batch — as well as to HTML and to play tools such as LackeyCCG and Cockatrice. It runs offline on your own computer, and your project files stay on your own disk.

The Cardsmith side, in its own words

Cardsmith’s homepage headline is “Design MTG cards for free,” under the line “The Best MTG Card Editor. Design. Generate. Print.” It describes creating custom MTG cards, generating artwork with its AI image generator, then downloading the files to print at home or ordering prints from the site. Its homepage walks through a live editor, the AI image generator, an image upscale tool, and a print offer built around printed card stock. It also presents a premium tier on the same page. We quote those as the site’s own description of itself; the one thing that is independently clear from the form alone is that this is a hosted web service — the editor, your saved work and the print ordering all live on their side of the browser.

Where the forms differ

How to choose

• Whole-set design with balancing tools: MSE — set statistics, randomized packs and sealed pools have no equivalent in a single-card web editor’s pitch, because that is not the job it is selling.
• A single card, start to printed copy, without installing anything: that end-to-end browser flow is exactly what Cardsmith’s homepage describes.
• Control and permanence: MSE keeps the project, the templates and the exports on your machine under an open-source licence. With any hosted editor, read its terms for your uploaded artwork before you commit a whole set to it — that advice applies to every web tool, not just this one.

Used together, the split is natural: sketch and share single cards online, then do the sustained set-building — and the final export for printing — in MSE.

Keep reading

• Magic Set Editor vs CardConjurer
• Magic Set Editor vs MTG.Design
• Magic Set Editor vs Photoshop for Custom Cards

The MSE side

Magic Set Editor (MSE) is a free, open-source desktop program released under GPL-2.0, originally written by Twan van Laarhoven. It was designed first for Magic: The Gathering and also supports other games through templates, including Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon and Vs. System. Its unit of work is the set: you build and manage a whole custom set in one file, use its statistics window (such as average mana cost and rarity counts), generate randomized packs and sealed pools, and export cards as png, jpg, bmp or tiff images — individually or as a whole-set batch — as well as to HTML and to play tools such as LackeyCCG and Cockatrice. It runs offline on your own computer, and your project files stay on your own disk.

Two honest limits belong in any MSE summary: the upstream program stopped at version 2.1.2 in 2020 (the community now distributes integrated 2.5.8 packages and keeps template packs updated), and MSE is a desktop program — there is no official Mac native package, no mobile app, and no browser version. Our platform guides cover what Mac and Linux users can realistically do.

The MTG.Design side, in its own words

MTG.Design’s homepage leads with the sentence “Create cards from any web-enabled device.” It explains that you create custom Magic cards right from your web browser — useful, in its words, when the idea arrives while you are away from a PC, waiting in line or between rounds. Its second homepage section is “Save and share your creations”: cards can be shared with the community, published to social media or exported locally, and the cards you make are saved to your account so you can come back and change them. That account-based, any-device form is the whole proposition — and we are deliberately not adding feature claims beyond what that homepage states.

Desktop set editor vs browser card maker

How to choose

• You design whole sets, cubes or custom draft environments: choose MSE. Set statistics, randomized packs and batch export exist for exactly this, and your project lives on your disk.
• Your ideas arrive on the move and you want to draft a card from a phone or a borrowed computer: that is the scenario MTG.Design’s homepage is written for.
• You do both: capture the idea wherever it arrives, then build the finished set in MSE, where the balancing tools and the print-ready export workflow live. Our full MSE workflow guide shows that second half.

Keep reading

• Magic Set Editor vs CardConjurer
• Magic Set Editor vs MTG Cardsmith
• Magic Set Editor vs Photoshop for Custom Cards

What CardConjurer was — and what the current site is

CardConjurer was a web-based custom card creator that launched in 2020. In November 2022 its original project received a cease and desist from Wizards of the Coast: the original site was shut down that month, as reported at the time by TheGamer and TechRaptor. That history matters for trust. The cardconjurer.com domain is still reachable in 2026 — when we checked its homepage on 21 October 2026 it described itself as a free, web-based custom card creator where you can use its custom templates or make your own — but who operates the current site, and what its relationship is to the original project, is unverified. We therefore do not treat the current domain as the same proven project, and we do not recommend uploading work you cannot afford to lose to any web tool whose operator you cannot identify.

One genuine link between the two projects does exist on the MSE side: the community Full-Magic-Pack for MSE notes that some of its template images came from CardConjurer, including double-faced-card related frames. That is a template heritage, not a shared program or a shared team.

The real difference: a desktop set editor vs an online single-card tool

Which one fits which job?

• Building a full custom set or cube environment: MSE. Set-level management, statistics, randomized packs and whole-set batch export are set tools, and they are the reason MSE exists.
• Making one card image quickly, on a machine where you cannot install anything: a browser tool is the natural form for that job — that convenience is exactly what web card makers are for. Just keep the trust caveat above in mind, and keep your own copy of the artwork and text.
• Long-term projects: MSE again. The upstream program has been frozen at version 2.1.2 since 2020 and the community distribution is 2.5.8, but both run locally — a local program does not disappear when a website closes, which is precisely what happened to the original CardConjurer in 2022.

Our honest summary: these are not really the same kind of tool wearing two names. MSE is the set-building workbench you keep; a web card maker is a counter you visit. Many designers use the counter for a quick idea and the workbench for the real set.

Keep reading

• Magic Set Editor vs MTG.Design
• Magic Set Editor vs MTG Cardsmith
• Magic Set Editor vs Photoshop for Custom Cards

Why “MSE for Android” claims do not hold up

Every genuine MSE release is a desktop file: the SourceForge 2.0.0 Windows installer and Linux tarballs (2011), the GitHub 2.1.2 Windows zips (2020), and a Linux Flatpak of the same 2.1.2. None of these channels has ever published an .apk, an .ipa, or an app-store listing.

You may see SourceForge’s download statistics cited as proof — the stats do contain a small “Android” figure among the operating systems. That number sits alongside a large “Unknown” category and reflects how download traffic was classified, not the existence of an Android build: there is no Android file in any MSE release for anyone to have downloaded. Likewise, an app in a store using the MSE name is not the desktop program ported — at best it is an unrelated card maker borrowing the name, and it will not open your MSE set files.

What actually works on a phone: online card makers

On a phone or tablet, the realistic tool for custom Magic cards is a browser-based card maker. The following were online when checked on 21 October 2026; we list them as they are, without inventing feature comparisons we have not verified:

• MTG.Design — a web-based custom card maker, live and operating.
• MTG Cardsmith — a web-based custom card maker with a community around it, live and operating.
• MTGNexus — a community site whose custom card tools require an account; live and operating, with finer control over card text than simpler makers (per published reviews).
• CardConjurer — listed with a warning: the original CardConjurer project was shut down in November 2022 after a cease-and-desist from Wizards of the Coast. A site at the domain is reachable today, but who operates it now, and its relationship to the original project, is not verified — use it knowing that history.

These tools run entirely in the browser, so they work the same on Android, iPhone and iPad. What they are good at is speed: sketch a card idea the moment it occurs to you, share it, get feedback. What they do not replicate is MSE’s desktop workflow — a set file holding hundreds of cards, a statistics window for the whole set, and batch export of every card image at once.

The sensible split: phone for ideas, desktop for sets

• On mobile: draft and share individual cards with an online maker above. No install, no fake “MSE app” needed.
• On desktop: do the real set work in MSE — Windows natively, Linux via Flathub, Mac via the routes in our Mac guide. Your set lives in a file you control, offline.
• Moving between the two: keep your card text and art in a notes or files app you already use, then build the final cards in MSE. There is no shared cloud format between the online makers and MSE, so plain text is the honest bridge.

If a site tries to sell or sideload you a “Magic Set Editor Android app”, close the tab. The program is free, desktop-only, and GPL-2.0 — and on mobile, the browser tools above are the genuine alternative.

Keep reading

• Magic Set Editor platforms hub
• Magic Set Editor for Mac
• Magic Set Editor on Chromebook

The honest baseline: low resolution is MSE’s known weakness

This is not a defect of your install. Commentary on MSE — including a hands-on write-up at robopenguins.com and MTG Wiki’s assessment that MSE’s image quality does not match a full graphics editor, partly because lower-quality images were used to save on download size — agrees that the program and its older templates were built for modest output sizes. The classic templates were made when a card image on screen was small. Export one at modern sizes, or print it, and the softness shows. Any site promising that a hidden switch unlocks crisp output from those same templates is selling you something the program does not have.

There is no HD switch and no 600 DPI setting

Let us be direct, because older pages (including, previously, this site) have claimed otherwise: MSE has no high-definition toggle, no export DPI setting, and no patch that makes it export at 600 DPI. We could find no basis for those claims in the program or its documentation, and we have removed them. Resolution follows the template. Full stop.

A second cause: your imported art gets scaled down

Even with a good template, check what you fed it. MSE reduces the resolution of images you import rather than keeping your original file at full size, so art that started large and detailed can come back out smaller than you expected. Practical consequence: start from the largest, cleanest source image you have — upscaling a small image first will not add detail, but handing MSE a tiny source guarantees a soft result.

The fix that works: a high-resolution template pack

Because the template sets the resolution, the real upgrade is the template itself. The community maintains higher-resolution M15-style packs through the MagicSetEditorPacks organisation, and swapping to one raises the ceiling for every card in the set. Our guide to MSE high-resolution templates covers choosing and installing a pack, and Export Higher-Resolution Cards from MSE covers the export side step by step.

Export choices that preserve what you have

• Export as PNG for anything you will view, share or print from — it is lossless, unlike JPG, which adds compression artefacts on top of any softness. MSE can render cards as png, jpg, bmp or tiff, and can export a whole set in one batch.
• Judge at the template’s native size, not zoomed in. A card exported at its template’s intended size and viewed at that size will look as sharp as that template gets; blowing it up larger manufactures blur that was never in the file.
• Re-export after a template swap rather than resaving old images — the old exports stay low-resolution forever; only a fresh render from the set benefits from the new template.

For printing specifically, sharper exports are only half the job — bleed, margins and colour handling matter too. Our guide to preparing MSE cards for printing picks up where this one leaves off.

Keep reading

• MSE High-Resolution Templates: No HD Switch, No 600 DPI
• Export Higher-Resolution Cards from MSE
• Preparing Magic Set Editor Cards for Printing

Why there is no direct install

ChromeOS does not run Windows programs, and Magic Set Editor’s official releases are Windows files (the SourceForge installer and the GitHub zips) plus a Linux Flatpak. There is no .deb aimed at ChromeOS, no Android app, and nothing in the Chrome Web Store from the project. Any listing or video claiming an “official MSE for Chromebook” download is not from the project — the genuine files are the ones on our download page.

The workable path: the Linux environment + Flathub

Many Chromebooks can run Linux applications in ChromeOS’s built-in Linux environment (often called Linux on ChromeOS, or Crostini). Inside that Linux environment, MSE’s official Flatpak — io.github.twanvl.MagicSetEditor2, version 2.1.2, the author’s own build lineage — is the package to install, following the same steps as our Linux guide: enable the Linux environment in ChromeOS settings, set up Flatpak inside it, then install MSE from Flathub.

Read the limits before you rely on this. We describe this as a general path, and we have not tested it model by model: whether your Chromebook offers the Linux environment at all depends on the device, and school- or work-managed Chromebooks often have it disabled by the administrator. Linux apps on ChromeOS also live in their own container, so file access and performance vary. If the Linux environment is unavailable on your machine, this path is closed — there is no fallback install.

One more expectation to set: the Flatpak is the program only. Card templates come separately from the community template packs, and you will be copying the pack’s data/ folder into the MSE folder inside the Linux environment, which is fiddlier than on a regular PC. Budget a little patience for that step.

The simpler alternatives

• Use a Windows or Linux computer for MSE. If you have access to one, it is the program’s home ground: full template packs, fonts and batch export with no container in between.
• Use an online card maker in the Chrome browser. For drafting individual cards, a web tool needs no Linux environment and no install. Our mobile and online alternatives guide lists the online card makers that were live when we checked, with honest notes on each.

So: Chromebook owners are not locked out of custom card design — but be clear-eyed that MSE itself reaches a Chromebook only through the Linux container, on the models that allow it. That is a workaround with real limits, not official Chromebook support.

Keep reading

• Magic Set Editor platforms hub
• Magic Set Editor for Linux
• Magic Set Editor on Android and mobile