proxdex
The librarian for making proxy cards. proxdex keeps every card's assets in a predictable place keyed by its set + collector number (ex3-90, neo-136), tracks which pipeline stage each card has reached, corrects thin card frames, and records what you've actually printed — so a growing collection stays easy to search, and you never reprint a card you already have.
It handles Pokémon (pokemontcg.io + scrydex) and Magic: The Gathering (Scryfall), and one library can hold both — each card records its own game, so searching, backs and border specs follow the card.
It uses cardbleed (border extension) and Upscayl (upscaling), and imposes the print sheet itself — so it owns the whole path to paper.
Think of it as author a master, then reproduce it: the four card stages produce a device-independent, trim-size master (what the card should look like); the sheet step reproduces it faithfully on a specific printer + medium (colour-correct + add bleed outside the trim).
Pipeline
Each card's stored file is the actual trim-size card — no bleed. Four stages, one file per stage:
| # | stage | produced by | command | |---|------------|-------------------------------------------|---------| | 1 | original | downloaded from the game's image source | search / fetch | | 2 | bordered | thin frame expanded to trim (optional) | border | | 3 | upscaled | Upscayl — after the border fix | upscale / import | | 4 | edited | one uniform look — the master | grade |
Every step is one you run or skip — nothing is automatic. Steps 2–4 each carry their own state: pending → done (you ran it) or skipped (you decided it isn't needed). Skipping is a real answer: the next step just reads the previous stage instead, and sheet prints the furthest stage that exists.
proxdex skip upscale ex3-90 # bypass a step: drops its output, marks it skipped
proxdex unskip upscale ex3-90 # back to pending (the output is not restored)
proxdex reset upscale ex3-90 # delete the output and any skip markChanging an upstream stage removes every output after it — those went stale — so you can always re-border a card and rebuild from there without stale pixels surviving.
Special printings
Almost every card is one picture on one side of one 63×88mm card. Providers name two dozen layouts — saga, adventure, prototype, leveler, battle — but nearly all of them differ in rules text, not in ink, so proxdex records only what changes what goes on paper: one side, two sides, or half of a meld pair, plus whether the card is oversized. proxdex ls shows it in a Kind column, proxdex show spells it out, and the UI badges it on the tile and the card page.
#### Two sides
A Magic transform, modal, reversible or art-series card is one card with two sides, and fetch downloads both. Each side runs the pipeline on its own — a back face is a different picture and needs its own border fit — so every step, skip and reset takes --face 1 (front) or --face 2 (back). Without it they act on both.
Which side goes on the paper is your call, because a transform card has two real fronts and no back of its own:
proxdex flip isd-51 # swap which side prints on the front of a sheet
proxdex flip isd-51 --face 2 # or name it outrightsheet --faces duplex then prints that card's other side on the reverse instead of the shared card back. A one-sided card still takes the configured back. On a fronts-only sheet only the flipped-to side is imposed, and sheet says so.