Creating your own deck of cards to use in Obsidian Tarot is very easy. You will only need the deck building tool that I have designed exclusively for the users of the program and the images of the deck that you want to create.
👉 Download the deck building tool 👈
The first thing you should do is download the images of the deck you want to create, on the Internet there are countless web pages and blogs where you can get the images.
If you don’t know where to start, I recommend the website Tarot.com , where there are published a few decks.
Preparing the deck images
We prepare the images of the deck numbering them starting from 1 and in JPG format in a folder together with the image of the back of the cards to which we will name back.jpg. View this image as a reference:
WARNING: The order of the cards is very important since ordering them wrong can generate errors within the program or display the meanings of the cards incorrectly.
This is the correct order and numbering of each of the cards in a classic Tarot deck:
And this would be the correct order for a Lenormand deck:
IMPORTANT: If you want to create another type of deck that is not Tarot or Lenormand, at the end of this tutorial I will show you how to do it.
Deck building tool
When we have the images of the deck correctly numbered, we can open the deck creation tool. This is your main screen:
On this screen we select the interface language (Spanish or English) and click on the Create new deck option. The following screen will open where we must fill in the information of the deck:
- In the Images field we must select the folder where we have the images of the deck that we want to create and that we have prepared in the previous step of this tutorial.
- In the field Deck name we will put the name of our deck.
- In the Developer field we will write who is the creator or designer of the deck.
- In the Deck type field we select Tarot if we are creating a Tarot deck, Lenormand if we are creating a Lenormand deck or Other if we are creating another type of deck.
- In the field Reversed we select True if the deck supports the use of reversed cards or False if it does not. By default a Tarot deck accepts reversed cards and a Lenormand deck does not.
- In the field Radius we select the degrees of rounding that will be applied to the edges of the cards.
- In the Nº of cards field we can specify how many cards the deck is made up of, excluding the back.jpg file. For example, a tarot deck has 78 cards and a Lenormand deck has 36.
- In the Website field we can specify a web address where to see the details of the deck or the developer’s website.
- In the field Buy deck we can specify a web address where to buy the deck, either the author’s website or an affiliate link.
When we have filled in all the fields, we press the Create deck button and then the program will make a series of checks, if everything is fine, a window will open for us to choose where to save our deck.
IMAGE
Navigate to the Obsidian Tarot installation folder, generally C:\Program Files (x86)\Obsdian Tarot, then enter the DECKS folder, click on the button Create a new folder and write the name of the deck, for example RiderWaite, select said folder and click the OK button.
And we would have our new deck created! Now it will appear in the Obsidian Tarot deck menu, if it does not appear, click on the update decks button.
Creating a custom deck
If we want to create a custom deck that is not the classic 78-card Tarot deck or the 36-card Lenormand deck, we must select the Other option in the Type of deck drop-down and specify the number of cards in the deck in the Number of cards field, as well as specify whether the deck admits cards reversed or not in the Reversed dropdown.
When we have filled in all the fields, we press the Create deck button and then the program will make a series of checks, if everything is fine, a window will open for us to choose where to save our deck.
Navigate to the Obsidian Tarot installation folder, generally C:\Program Files (x86)\Obsdian Tarot, then enter the DECKS folder, click on the button Create a new folder and write the name of the deck, for example RiderWaite, select said folder and click the OK button.
And we would have our new deck created! Now it will appear in the Obsidian Tarot deck menu, if it does not appear, click on the update decks button.