Possible Issues and Verification? 

And what in the world are these tagged issues!?

Under 3 Minute Read.

In this article, we cover how to get started and upload an alter onto the platform.

The Design Approval Process

When you submit your design with us it will have a status indicating the current stage of approval it is at. Here’s a visual explanation of where your design will be visible depending on the status:

Here’s a breakdown of what the different stages actually entail:

• Rejected – the design did not meet our requirements but you are welcome to edit it and re-submit

• Removed – the design violated our terms and conditions; it has been deleted

• Pending – the design has been submitted and is awaiting the first check

• Action Required – the design has failed to meet our technical standards for printing: please fix and re-submit the image file

• Awaiting Verification – the design has been checked and is awaiting a print test

• Verification can take upwards of several business days. 

• Flagged – the design has been reported for a violation of terms and service: this can be contested

• Approved – the design has been approved: no more action is necessary

Common Problems and How to Fix them

    Oftentimes there are small problems with a design that needs to be ironed out for it to get approved. One of the largest issues is color on monitors to color printed. Color accurate monitors are quite expensive, and most people are not aware that the monitor they are currently using is likely very much not accurate to reflect actual printed colors. This is why it is important to view your design on more than one display to make sure it looks right to you, this is often easiest to do with a phone or tablet.

Corner Crops

    For Alter Sleeves to look right over a card, the corner of the alter has to be “cut” in the design. By default in our templates, this is already done for you. But otherwise, you have to edit the corners (the rounded bits) are cut out, or “cropped”, in your design before you submit it. If they are not, your design will be rejected. This can be fixed by doing the required edit and resubmitting the alter with the same design name. 

Pure White / Transparency

    Alter Sleeves are printed wholly opaque; they can not have any transparent bits on them. However, they require to have cutouts for where they go over cards. This means that pixels in your design have to be absolute in terms of alpha. Alpha is the value of transparency on a pixel. Alter Sleeve’s pixels have to be 100% Alpha or 0% Alpha (that is fully opaque or fully transparent). Designs that do not meet this, say they have partially transparent or blended pixels, will be rejected. On the same note, designs that are fully flat, that is they have no cutouts for card parts to poke through, will also be rejected. If a design is rejected over this, you will have to re-edit the design to remove any blended/transparent pixels.

    Below is actually not longer accurate, we have built into the uploaded a way to correct for this, but for the sake of history, we have left this note in.

    There is a bit of an exemption here. Pure white, #255255255 / #FFF, will always print on designs as transparent. So, alterists have the option of uploading designs with transparent parts or white parts, but not both. By this same measure, you want to make sure your design does not accidentally have pure white in it. This can be fixed by manipulating the color scale of the design; in photoshop this can be done with the level’s tool as shown below by capping off the maximum color range below 253. In your preferred program of choice there should be a tool by a similar name, if not, just search for “[PROGRAM] color levels tool?” on Google.

IP Rejection

    As noted in other articles, Alterists can not upload designs that contain Intellectual Property they do not own. If a sleeve is flagged for this, it will be removed. Repeated violation of this may get your account suspended or even removed.

Clone Tool / Tracing

    Relating to IP rejection, if we notice your design has used samples of the card (ie from clone brushing, etc.) it will also get removed or rejected. Alter Sleeves can not use parts of existing Magic cards in their designs. On that note, designs can not use traced elements unless the elements are non-major functions. What this means is that you could copy the outline or a character or even highlight it in your design, however, this outline must be embellished and not a replica of the character or object. 

Photographs / Stock Images

    You can actually use photographs and stock images in your designs, however similar to IP rejection, you must actually have the rights and royalty licensing to use them. If you are unsure if an image is royalty free, check with the provider or simply do not use it. Some stock images require a royalty and Alter Sleeves does not have a system in place to support that.