Perfect, uniform and matching Box Art for all your games...every time!

[Noctroxis]

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd share my 'secret' of how I've gotten my game library to look as good as the image I've attached. Perfect, rectangular squares that match all your games. This process is quite simple and works for 99.99% of all games. If you are like me then one thing that peeves you about Launcbox's GameDB is the inconsistency when it comes to cover art. People get covers from all over the web and some have company logos on them, others have weird sizes, and some have been Photoshopped to look like an actual CD case, etc....But if your goal is to have an elegant Games showcase you can proudly show off or have matching cover art when using Big Box then I have a fool-proof method that has allowed me to have nearly 400 games with matching covers. So without further ado, class is in session!

Steps to follow:

For the sake of these instructions I will be using the game "Halo Infinite" in my examples.

1. Go to IGDB ( Internet Game Database)

2. Search for your game in the top Search bar. This should work for 99.99% of all games unless they are sexual, BL, erotica-type games. They don't seem to catalog most of those.

3. Once you are at the games page. Right click the games cover/poster/whatever you like to call the "box art" and choose "Open image in a new tab". Do not get this confused with "Open link in a new tab",

 4. The URL of the image in the new tab will look something like this: https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_cover_big/co2dto.jpg. The secret is to add _2x after the _big so that it looks like this https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_cover_big_2x/co2dto.jpg. That will enlarge the cover image that you see by double so you have a larger image. This is great for big screens, TV's or if you just want to use a high quality image. If you are fine with the default 1x size then ignore this step and move to step 5. 

5. Drag the image from the screen to your computer somewhere and import it into Launchbox as your Box Art. That's it!

 

Told you this was simple. With this method you can have perfect box art every time for your games and if you're adding new games to the Launchbox GameDB I hope you use these covers for games you submit so we can start having uniform box art for others to import.  I guess now's a good time to direct some attention to the developer of this software, or any mods- if the ability to use IGDB as an image source when importing games can be an option. Since this is basically just stuff taken from their API and essentialy just a URL trick it seems pretty simple to include so we can have nice covers like this natively in the app.  

This page is where I got the image info for the URL from: https://api-docs.igdb.com/#images. It's IGDB's API info and all the different sizes of Box Art you can get from tweaking the images URL. You can see. Useful if you want your box art to be smaller, larger, etc. Maybe this can be built into the app? But that's neither here-nor-there...The purpose of this guide was to show you, the user, how you can import good quality, matching box art for your games.

Hope this helps!

Example of a 1x sized image:

Example of a 2x sized image: (click for full size)

Example of a 1080p sized image: (click for full size)

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by Noctroxis

[sundogak]

Interesting, always good to have more resources for media. Thanks for the link/info.  

Another alternative I have used same reason you capture above (plus have clear logos and banners) is the SteamGridDB site. They are uniform quality and size at 600x900 resolution.  If the original Steam Assets are available (most newer era games) there will be a button at the landing page for the game.  The Steam Assets are of high quality, although the user creations are pretty good as well (mostly).  In your example that is here and click on "View Original Steam Assets" button at left of screen for cover art (just right-click, save as image for 600x900).  A bit larger and taller aspect ratio than IGDB but disadvantage is SteamGridDB will only have those games that are sold on Steam (i.e., no Blizzard/Epic Games for one).   

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by sundogak

[Noctroxis]

13 hours ago, sundogak said:

Interesting, always good to have more resources for media. Thanks for the link/info.  

Another alternative I have used same reason you capture above (plus have clear logos and banners) is the SteamGridDB site. They are uniform quality and size at 600x900 resolution.  If the original Steam Assets are available (most newer era games) there will be a button at the landing page for the game.  The Steam Assets are of high quality, although the user creations are pretty good as well (mostly).  In your example that is here and click on "View Original Steam Assets" button at left of screen for cover art (just right-click, save as image for 600x900).  A bit larger and taller aspect ratio than IGDB but disadvantage is SteamGridDB will only have those games that are sold on Steam (i.e., no Blizzard/Epic Games for one).   

 

If you would like a REALLY big cover image and an even larger image than 2x you can get a large 720p image or a  HUGE 1080p image by replacing cover_big in the image link from IGDB with 720p or 1080p.

Example with Cyberpunk 2077 link:

Normal image link: https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_cover_big/co2mjs.jpg

720p image link: https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_720p/co2mjs.jpg

1080p image link: https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_1080p/co2mjs.jpg

As you can see if you follow my instructions above for steps 1 through 4 ...just instead of putting _2x after _big instead replace the entire cover_big with 1080p (or 720p). With that you'll end up with bigger boxed art.

(click image for full size)

Edited August 4, 2021 by Noctroxis

[C-Beats]

9 hours ago, sundogak said:

disadvantage is SteamGridDB will only have those games that are sold on Steam

Not sure that is true anymore. You can even find posters for NES games on SteamGridDB (though not all)

[NamkaiBanco]

Does anyone have a good source for custom art work? Something like the Poster Database? or a Reddit forum? I like to have choices when decorating my library

[Yorrick36]

I tend to use https://www.steamgriddb.com/ when I'm looking to fill media. There's a fairly large number of games outside of steam that have a lot of user submitted covers/logos.

[gamesmame]

I try and make small yet... 

[marcosgaming]

Hi guys,

thank for the content.

I would try to do this but automatically because i have a lot of games.

Doesn't exists a plugin for to do this ???

Thanks.

[Boxylisher]

On 9/20/2022 at 10:39 PM, Yorrick36 said:

I tend to use https://www.steamgriddb.com/basket random when I'm looking to fill media. There's a fairly large number of games outside of steam that have a lot of user submitted covers/logos.

I also have the same interests as you.

Edited April 2 by Boxylisher