Nezbo.CardPrintLayouter 1.0.13

CardPrintLayouter

A tool for creating print-ready PDFs from card images, optimized for printing custom card games, board games, and other card-based projects.

Features

• Arrange cards in a grid layout optimized for the specified page size
• Support for double-sided cards
• Multiple bleed handling options (add, remove, preserve)
• Automatic calculation of rows and columns based on card dimensions
• Support for reading cards from directories or zip files
• Hierarchical configuration through config files
• Guide lines for easy cutting

Installation

Package Manager Console

Install-Package Nezbo.CardPrintLayouter

.NET CLI

dotnet add package Nezbo.CardPrintLayouter

Usage

Basic Usage

using Nezbo.CardPrintLayouter;

using var generator = new CardPdfGenerator(o =>
{
    o.SourcePath = @"path\to\your\card\images";
    o.SeparationStrategy = SeparationStrategy.SeparateFiles;
    o.BackFileKey = "back";
    o.IncludeBacks = true;
});
generator.Generate();

Configuration Options

CardPrintLayouter uses a configuration system with hierarchical inheritance. You can place a cards.config file in any directory containing card images, and settings will be inherited from parent directories.

Available Options

Configuration File Format

The cards.config file uses a simple key-value format:

CardWidthMM=63
CardHeightMM=88
BleedStrategy=Add
BleedXMM=3
BleedYMM=3
PageSize=A4

Configuration Inheritance

Configuration settings are inherited in the following order (later ones override earlier ones):

1. Default values (built into the application)
2. Parent directory cards.config files
3. Current directory cards.config file
4. Command-line or programmatic options

This allows you to set common settings (like paper size) in a root directory, and override specific settings (like bleed options) in subdirectories.

Page Text and Dynamic Placeholders

You can add custom text to each page using the PageText option. This text can include dynamic placeholders that will be replaced with values for each page:

The position of this text is controlled by the PageTextLocation option, which can be set to any of:

• TopLeft
• TopCenter
• TopRight
• BottomLeft
• BottomCenter
• BottomRight

Example usage:

o.PageText = "{Page} / {Pages} - {Side} - {File}";
o.PageTextLocation = PageTextLocation.BottomRight;

Bleed Handling

CardPrintLayouter offers several strategies for handling card bleeds:

• None: No bleed processing is performed.
• Remove: Removes existing bleed from input images.
• Preserve: Keeps existing bleed as-is.
• Add: Adds new bleed to images that don't have it.

The bleed style can be set to:

• Border: Extends the card edge colors outward.
• Reversed: Creates a mirrored effect at the edges.

Card Backs

By default, the program looks for files named back.png, back.jpg, etc. for card backs. You can customize this with:

1. The BackFileKey option to specify a different base name
2. The BackPatterns option to match specific fronts with specific backs

Back Patterns

The BackPatterns option allows you to define regular expression patterns to match front card filenames with specific back filenames:

BackPatterns=[(.*creature.*);"creature_back",(.*spell.*);"spell_back"]

This example would match any filename containing "creature" with "creature_back" and any filename containing "spell" with "spell_back".

Front/Back Card Pairing

The program automatically tries to match images whose names only differ by ending in "front" and "back". This is useful for card games where each card has unique front and back artwork, stored as separate image files.

Example:

• With files "spell-front.png" and "spell-back.png"
• The program will create one card with "spell-front.png" as the front and "spell-back.png" as the back

Advanced Usage

Reading from ZIP Files

You can directly process cards from a ZIP file:

o.SourcePath = @"path\to\your\cards.zip";

Separation Strategies

You can control how cards are organized in the output:

• Continuous: All cards in a single continuous PDF
• SeparatePages: Each directory of cards starts on a new page
• SeparateFiles: Each directory of cards goes to a separate PDF file

PNG Output

CardPrintLayouter supports generating PNG images instead of PDFs. Simply set the OutputFilename to have a .png extension. When PNG format is used:

• Each page is generated as a separate PNG file
• Files are named with the format {Filename}{pageNo}.png (e.g., cards1.png, cards2.png, etc.)
• Images are generated at 300 DPI for high-quality output
• This is useful for web display, digital prototyping, or when you need individual page images

Example:

using var generator = new CardPdfGenerator(o =>
{
    o.SourcePath = @"C:\Cards";
    o.OutputFilename = "cards.png";  // Will generate cards1.png, cards2.png, etc.
});
generator.Generate();

Examples

Basic Configuration

using var generator = new CardPdfGenerator(o =>
{
    o.SourcePath = @"C:\Cards";
    o.CardWidthMM = 63;
    o.CardHeightMM = 88;
    o.PageSize = PageSizes.A4;
});
generator.Generate();

Adding Bleed to Cards

using var generator = new CardPdfGenerator(o =>
{
    o.SourcePath = @"C:\Cards";
    o.BleedStrategy = BleedStrategy.Add;
    o.BleedXMM = 3;
    o.BleedYMM = 3;
});
generator.Generate();

Generating Separate Files

using var generator = new CardPdfGenerator(o =>
{
    o.SourcePath = @"C:\Cards";
    o.SeparationStrategy = SeparationStrategy.SeparateFiles;
});
generator.Generate();

Requirements

• .NET 6.0 or higher

License

This project uses QuestPDF with the Community License.