Please note this article refers to the new “Lite” iOS and Android versions only, if new features prove popular they will be built into the original MTG4Life.

Some ideas for advanced editing.

The editor supports five main features in the features bar at the bottom of the app as shown above.

• You could use the third editor feature “shapes” to draw boxes on the wallpaper where you want better background separation. This could just be plain black or white boxes but for more fun the editor palette supports the five magic colours and the ability to make the boxes as transparent as you want to facilitate this idea. Additionally the five magic colours in the palette are set to be the same as the magic colour themes used in the app to render controls to get a good match.

• Another idea, you could also use a box the whole size of the wallpaper image to overlay a magic colour themed filter on the whole wallpaper eg use white to lighten, black to darken or red/blue/green to match theme.

• You could use the first editor feature “text” to add your own text, again in any of the five magic colours and in various fonts

• For the really adventurous we support full free hand drawing with the second editor feature “drawing”, again with any of the five magic colours and using the stroke size of your choice. 🙂

• If you have any other ideas or customisations you would like to show off then please add them to the comments section below.

Editor Top Tips

• You can zoom the wallpaper in the editor using the usual two finger pinch, you can also pan the zoomed wallpaper using a two fingered drag
• When using the editor features at the bottom of the editor this may sometimes cause submenus to appear replacing the top level menu, in this case a “<” back button will appear in the far left of that bottom feature bar to take you to the previous menu.
• Always remember to touch the ticks in the right hand side of filter sliders before touching save or that filter wont be applied!
• Text and Shapes are active editor objects that can be selected directly on the wallpaper canvas and edited again later
• If you make a mistake you can use the undo/redo buttons at the top of the editor
• If you want to quickly get rid of all your changes and start again with the wallpaper as it was when you started the editing session you can use the “Reset Session Changes” at the top of the editor.
• If you want to completely restart with the original downloaded wallpaper you can go back to the customisation page and load the original static downloaded wallpaper again, this deletes and overwrites the previous internal app wallpaper copy.
• Note, dont worry, none of the editing options affect the original downloaded wallpaper, they only affect a copy of the wallpaper that the app uses internally to render the background. Any edited changes will be stored in local app storage when closed and then reused when the app is reopened i.e. any options do not overwrite the original wallpaper, you wont have to find it on the web and download it again.

Read more "Advanced Editor Ideas: custom editing guide."

Please note this article refers to the new “Lite” iOS and Android versions only, if new features prove popular they will be built into the original MTG4Life.

Depending on your preference you may like the wallpaper background to take precedence in the app scoreboard display or you may prefer the controls overlaying the wallpaper background to take precedence to make them clearer to see.

Whatever your preference, the first approach is always to choose one of the five magic colour themes , either to contrast the themed controls with the wallpaper background or to blend in with it.

If you want more detailed control over this separation you can use editor again, specifically the fifth editor feature button at the bottom as shown below to apply several filters to the wallpaper image.

This is also shown below as part of the app video walkthrough…

It is best to experiment with the filter features to get the effect you would like. The most common ones to make the controls stand out better are to use contrast to “fade” the image, brightness to “darken” the image or use blur to “soften” the image.

IMPORTANT! Please remember to touch the tick at the right side of the filter sliders before touching save to leave the editor or the filter wont be applied.

Editor Top Tips

• You can zoom the wallpaper in the editor using the usual two finger pinch, you can also pan the zoomed wallpaper using a two fingered drag
• When using the editor features at the bottom of the editor this may sometimes cause submenus to appear replacing the top level menu, in this case a “<” back button will appear in the far left of that bottom feature bar to take you to the previous menu.
• Always remember to touch the ticks in the right hand side of filter sliders before touching save or that filter wont be applied!
• Text and Shapes are active editor objects that can be selected directly on the wallpaper canvas and edited again later
• If you make a mistake you can use the undo/redo buttons at the top of the editor
• If you want to quickly get rid of all your changes and start again with the wallpaper as it was when you started the editing session you can use the “Reset Session Changes” at the top of the editor.
• If you want to completely restart with the original downloaded wallpaper you can go back to the customisation page and load the original static downloaded wallpaper again, this deletes and overwrites the previous internal app wallpaper copy.
• Note, dont worry, none of the editing options affect the original downloaded wallpaper, they only affect a copy of the wallpaper that the app uses internally to render the background. Any edited changes will be stored in local app storage when closed and then reused when the app is reopened i.e. any options do not overwrite the original wallpaper, you wont have to find it on the web and download it again.

Read more "How to get wallpaper background separation: custom editing guide."

Please note this article refers to the new “Lite” iOS and Android versions only, if new features prove popular they will be built into the original MTG4Life.

Introduction

This is a brief guide to the features in the “Custom Wallpaper Editing” section of the app. Once you have downloaded your wallpaper it may not be a perfect fit for the specific shape of your device so how can you fix this?

Getting the wallpaper to fit your device

You have two main options to get a good fit for your downloaded wallpapers.

1. Fit or Fill

The simplest and quickest is to select one of the three “Fit or Fill” options from the Custom Wallpaper Editing section shown below.

The actions of these options are described in the app and its good to just try them out on your wallpaper to see the result.

That said, the most commonly used is the second “Fill Phone with Clipped Wallpaper” as this will make sure most of the wallpaper is included and will not stretch and distort the image.

If you dont mind some wallpaper distortion the third option will fit in the whole wallpaper and the first option is for when the wallpaper matches the device dimensions well and no clipping or stretching is needed. This option is typically used after a wallpaper has been cropped with the editor as described below.

Note for your convenience the first option is automatically selected for you after leaving the editor so you can see the unclipped/undistorted results.

For more detailed editing you can use the full editor by touching the “Use Full Wallpaper Editor”.

2. Full editor cropping

As shown above, the wallpaper editor has the wallpaper editing canvas in the centre, specific editing features such as crop etc at a bar in the bottom and high level editor features such as save etc at a bar in the top.

You can crop the image by touching the fourth editor feature button “image transforms” in the bottom bar and then the crop button (shown with arrows below).

This is also shown below as part of the product walkthrough video…

With cropping the idea is to change the shape of the wallpaper to match the shape of your device. You can then use the “Fit Whole Wallpaper” option described above to display as is. Alternatively, for an off centred badly fitting wallpaper, you could crop out a better centred image and then use the “Fill Phone with Clipped Wallpaper” option to fill the device.

When you have finished cropping, dont forget to touch the tick at the bottom right of the editor bar and then touch the “Save MTG4Life Copy” to save the local app copy.

This is pretty much all you need to know for the majority of people using the app, for people who want more control or artistic options please follow these links to other articles.

Getting your preferred wallpaper background separation

Advanced Editor Options

Editor Top Tips

• You can zoom the wallpaper in the editor using the usual two finger pinch, you can also pan the zoomed wallpaper using a two fingered drag
• When using the editor features at the bottom of the editor this may sometimes cause submenus to appear replacing the top level menu, in this case a “<” back button will appear in the far left of that bottom feature bar to take you to the previous menu.
• Always remember to touch the ticks in the right hand side of filter sliders before touching save or that filter wont be applied!
• Text and Shapes are active editor objects that can be selected directly on the wallpaper canvas and edited again later
• If you make a mistake you can use the undo/redo buttons at the top of the editor
• If you want to quickly get rid of all your changes and start again with the wallpaper as it was when you started the editing session you can use the “Reset Session Changes” at the top of the editor.
• If you want to completely restart with the original downloaded wallpaper you can go back to the customisation page and load the original static downloaded wallpaper again, this deletes and overwrites the previous internal app wallpaper copy.
• Note, dont worry, none of the editing options affect the original downloaded wallpaper, they only affect a copy of the wallpaper that the app uses internally to render the background. Any edited changes will be stored in local app storage when closed and then reused when the app is reopened i.e. any options do not overwrite the original wallpaper, you wont have to find it on the web and download it again.

Read more "How to fit your wallpaper to your device: custom editing guide."

In MTG4Life “Lite”, images are used for static wallpapers and videos are used for live wallpapers. These can be downloaded via your mobile browser from anywhere on the web and loaded into your app.

No edition of MTG4Life comes with any wallpaper art or video, please respect any artist/creators/owners rights.

Good Static Wallpaper Image Sources

The official Wizards of the Coast wallpaper collection

Art of Magic the Gathering

Deviant Art

Art of MTG Tumbler account

(Note: we are a big fan of scryfall.com and were even going to add automatic downloads from their site into the app using their web API, but they only provide low resolution art crops from cards that just arnt up to the quality of manually downloading digital art from the web)

There are also some great reddit communities like mtgporn or wallpapers for official and fan art.

Otherwise just do a search for “Magic the Gathering art”.

If you are an artist and would like your art showcased in our upcoming “Featured Artist” section of our app then get in touch at mtglife@outlook.com

Good Live Wallpaper Video Sources

Creators have done some amazing jobs using tools like Wallpaper Engine and Lively Wallpaper

One particular redditor and wallpaper engine creator “shameddd” deserves a special callout as his magic related work inspired us with the idea to include live wallpapers in the app in the first place, his work is featured here and has directly downloadable videos ready for use in the app.

There are a few live wallpaper websites like:

My Live Wallpapers

Waifu

Livewallp

Have a look at the “fantasy” categories on these sites.

A particularly good Ugin live wallpaper for direct download and use in the app is here.

A lot of Wallpaper engine creators have their own workshop pages like this, but not all include videos to download and you may need to have wallpaper engine installed and capture it to video yourself.

There are a lot of youtube videos of live wallpapers and you will probably need a third party app to download them.

Otherwise just do a search for “Live Wallpapers”

Again there are some great reddit communities like livewallpapers, wallpaperengine and LivelyWallpaper

If you fancy making your own wallpaper with wallpaper engine and need some help, check out this series on youtube and let us know about your creation with a comment below or email us at mtg4life@outlook.com. As above we can showcase it in our upcoming “Featured Artist” section of our app.

Resources of your own you like?

Please add any suggestions below in the comments for other users. Thank you! 🙂

Read more "Where to find good wallpapers? A resources guide."

Where to find good Wallpapers

This is covered in the following post.

How to download and use Wallpapers

Have a look at the video above for an app walkthrough including how to load wallpapers into the new “lite” iPhone app – but how do you download them from in the first place?

In MTG4Life “Lite”, images are used for static wallpapers and videos are used for live wallpapers. These can be downloaded via your mobile browser from anywhere on the web using the usual process for downloading things from your browser.

If you are unfamiliar with downloading items from your mobile browser the process is described below with a step by step guide.

No edition of MTG4Life comes with any wallpaper art or video, please respect any artist/creators/owners rights.

Step by Step Guide for Static Wallpaper Images

1. Find the image you want in your browser, touch and hold the image to bring up a menu. In Safari select “Add to Photos” and in other browsers it will be “Save picture” or “Download image”. The image will then be downloaded to your phone and will be viewable in the Photos app.
2. In MTG4Life “Lite” touch the central cog, touch the heart icon to get to the customisation features hub. Slide your finger left to show the Custom Wallpapers area and touch the “Load Static Wallpaper” button. You may have to give the app permission to access your photos. Then select the folder the image was downloaded from step 1. and select it to make it your wallpaper. The above video contains a walkthrough at timestamp 1 minute 31 seconds here.

Step by Step Guide for for Live Wallpaper Videos

1. It appears downloading videos is best done using the built in Apple Safari browser only.
2. Find the video you want in Safari. The page will usually have a separate “Download” button you will need to press to download it to your phone. It will then be downloaded to your phone usually in the “Downloads” folder viewable in the Files app. If it is a youtube video you would typically need a third party tool to download it.
3. In iOS, to make it available to other apps like MTG4Life the video has to be “shared to the photos app”. To do this open the Files app and find the video in the Downloads folder. Touch and hold the video and select “Share”, then select “Save Video”. It will then appear in the Photos app in the Videos folder and can used by MTG4Life “Lite”
4. In MTG4Life “Lite” touch the central cog, touch the heart icon to get to the customisation features hub. Slide your finger left to show the Custom Wallpapers area and touch the “Load Live Wallpaper” button. You may have to give the app permission to access your videos. Then select the folder the video was downloaded from step 1. and select it to make it your live wallpaper. The above video contains a walkthrough at timestamp 33 seconds here.

Read more "Wallpapers Guide for new “Lite” iPhone Edition"

How to download and use Wallpapers

Have a look at the video above for an app walkthrough including how to load wallpapers into the new “lite” Android app – but how do you download them from in the first place?

In MTG4Life “Lite”, images are used for static wallpapers and videos are used for live wallpapers. These can be downloaded via your mobile browser from anywhere on the web using the usual process for downloading things from your browser.

If you are unfamiliar with downloading items from your mobile browser the process is described below with a step by step guide.

No edition of MTG4Life comes with any wallpaper art or video, please respect any artist/creators/owners rights.

Step by Step Guide for Static Wallpaper Images

1. Find the image you want in your browser, touch and hold the image to bring up a menu, then select “Download Image”. It will then be downloaded to your phone usually in the “Downloads” folder viewable in the Photos app.
2. In MTG4Life “Lite” touch the central cog, touch the heart icon to get to the customisation features hub. Slide your finger left to show the Custom Wallpapers area and touch the “Load Static Wallpaper” button. You may have to give the app permission to access your photos. Then select the folder the image was downloaded from step 1. and select it to make it your wallpaper. The above video contains a walkthrough at timestamp 1 minute 31 seconds here.

Step by Step Guide for Live Wallpaper Videos

1. Find the video you want in your browser. The page will usually have a separate “Download” button you will need to press to download it to your phone. It will then be downloaded to your phone usually in the “Downloads” folder viewable in the Photos app. If it is a youtube video you would typically need to use a third party app to download it.
2. In MTG4Life “Lite” touch the central cog, touch the heart icon to get to the customisation features hub. Slide your finger left to show the Custom Wallpapers area and touch the “Load Live Wallpaper” button. You may have to give the app permission to access your videos. Then select the folder the video was downloaded from step 1. and select it to make it your live wallpaper. The above video contains a walkthrough at timestamp 33 seconds here.

Read more "Wallpapers Guide for new “Lite” Android Edition"

A new “lite” version of MTG4Life has been built from scratch for the iPhone and is now available on the Apple App Store here. It will also work on the iPad and M1 based Macs.

This new iPhone version has a special focus on the customisation aspect of the original, including new unique features like live wallpapers and a full wallpaper editing experience to make any downloaded wallpaper art a custom fit for your phone.

These features are built on top of the the originals core feature of displaying game state integrated into full bleed Magic art; including life counting, secondary counters for poison/energy and player names. The whole app is reskinnable to be any of the five magic colours themes and any art can be downloaded from the integrated MTG4Life website or from anywhere on the web.

We are actively developing this app to bring it closer to the full featured MTG4Life original that has proved so popular on Windows/Xbox. If you would like us to prioritize or add specific features from the original app then please leave us a review on the Apple App Store with your request. We are especially interested in current MTG4Life users opinions. 🙂

If the new live wallpaper and wallpaper editor features prove popular we will build them for the original MTG4Life.

The quick “sizzle reel” of the app is included at the start of this article to get your attention, if you would like a slower longer walkthrough of somebody actually using the app have a look below.

Read more "Announcing iPhone “Lite” Edition"

A new “lite” version of MTG4Life has been built from scratch for Android phones and is now available on the Google Play Store here. It will also work on Android tablets and Chromebooks.

This new Android version has a special focus on the customisation aspect of the original, including new unique features like live wallpapers and a full wallpaper editing experience to make any downloaded wallpaper art a custom fit for your phone.

These features are built on top of the the originals core feature of displaying game state integrated into full bleed Magic art; including life counting, secondary counters for poison/energy and player names. The whole app is reskinnable to be any of the five magic colours themes and any art can be downloaded from the integrated MTG4Life website or from anywhere on the web.

We are actively developing this app to bring it closer to the full featured MTG4Life original that has proved so popular on Windows/Xbox. If you would like us to prioritize or add specific features from the original app then please leave us a review on the Google Play Store with your request. We are especially interested in current MTG4Life users opinions. 🙂

If the new live wallpaper and wallpaper editor features prove popular we will build them for the original MTG4Life.

The quick “sizzle reel” of the app is included at the start of this article to get your attention, if you would like a slower longer walkthrough of somebody actually using the app have a look below.

Read more "Announcing Android “Lite” Edition"

We are now published on the Xbox games store!

Xbox owners can make their living room or games room into a feature match area with a large displayed scoreboard together with its own built in “Magic Judge” commentator. Give you and your friends that “Pro Player” feeling.

Customise male or female judge voices and quick or slow commentary to match your preference.

Furthering the feature match theme use the built in timer with verbal timer announcements and warnings and a loud Time on the Round “Gong” alarm.

When all games are finished show the results on the big screen with the Personal League Table showing the game record history and your win rate with highlights such as “most feared opponent”etc.

Read more "Announcing Xbox One edition!"

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20 Million Players – One Cool App.

Tablet, 2-in-1, laptop, mobile and Xbox One.

New “Lite” versions available for iPhone and Android.

“Lite” versions also run on iPad, M1 Macs, Android tablets and Chromebooks.

Available free here at the Microsoft Store.

Available free here at the Apple App Store.

Available free here at the Google Play Store.

Read more "For those that LOVE Magic Art!"