SVG Playing Cards, A Public Domain Full Deck

Something as simple as 54 small printed cards can have a huge impact upon human social history. From before the Middle Ages decks of playing cards have been used for games, fortune telling, gambling, magic tricks, and teaching mathematics (probability theory). Playing cards have embraced the widespread use of computers and the Internet and have long gone digital. Computers often come with card games, and online card games are popular. Published here are a set of SVG playing cards for use on computers and in apps. They can be downloaded from here as a zip file. Low resolution playing card graphics images are also in the zip file. An example is this Ace of Spades (the other playing card images are individually provided later in this article). Other bitmap densities of playing card files can be generated from the vector files using a drawing program, e.g. Inkscape.

Ace of Spades

What are SVG Playing Cards?

So what are SVG playing cards? SVG is for Scaler Vector Graphics. SVG is a graphics format that stores images as vectors (lines of a given length and angle), and other mathematical based elements. These mathematical elements describe an image. This is different from the common way of representing images as dots or pixels. The SVG format allows images to be scaled to different sizes without any loss of "sharpness". This makes an image of a playing card stored as SVG very useful. It can be resized without becoming blurry, and can be used to produce pixel based, or bitmap, images of playing cards at different sizes for different screen resolutions.

Large King of Diamonds Medium King of Diamonds Small King of Diamonds

To obtain playing cards bitmaps at higher resolutions use one of the playing cards vector images and export it from a graphics program at a high dots per inch (DPI) setting. An example of a image program that can export SVGs to bitmaps, such as portable network graphic (PNG) format, is Inkscape (which you can download and use for free).

Why Yet Another Set of Playing Card Images

There are thousands of playing card images available from the Internet. What this SVG resource has is the full deck of cards images, and that includes SVG images of Joker cards, which are often overlooked. In addition, useful for developing apps that use playing cards, are card backs, and a blank card. Futhermore, the card symbols for the suits have been made slightly different from what has been seen before.

Playing card suits

Public Domain Playing Card Images

What good is a set of playing card images if they cannot be freely used for any purpose. Fortunately, since playing cards have been around for hundreds of years, the commonly seen designs are free to use by anyone. The common designs are Public Domain playing card images. What is Public Domain? It means the image designs are not under copyright. Despite plenty of weird, wonderful, and imaginative playing card designs emerging, the traditional designs still dominate because of their familiarity, simplicity, cleaness, and being free to use and freely adapted by others. That has been done here. Despite tweaks to the pips and fonts, these vector playing cards are placed into the Public Domain. To use these card images no permission is required. Download them for free, no royalty payment is asked or required. I do ask you to provide a link to this article, it would be appreciated for the hard work that has gone into creating and maintaining this resource. Suggestions for improvements to the SVG playing cards are welcome.

Public Domain Images of Clubs Playing Cards

Here are exported playing card bitmaps, PNGs, of the clubs suit from the SVG playing card images. Inkscape was used to export the PNGs at 96 DPI. Click on the card to see the SVG version (use the back button to return).

Public Domain Images of Diamonds Playing Cards

Now the exported playing card bitmaps, PNGs, of the diamonds suit. Again, click on the card to see the SVG version and use the back button to return.

Public Domain Images of Spades Playing Cards

Here are the exported playing card bitmaps, PNGs, of the spades suit. Click on the card to see the SVG version, use the back button to return.

If you want a simple Ace of Spaces it is available:

Public Domain Images of Hearts Playing Cards

Exported playing card bitmaps, PNGs, of the hearts suit. Click a card to see the SVG version, use the back button to return.

Public Domain Joker Playing Cards

Here are the two Joker cards to make up the common 54 card deck. As before, click a card to see the SVG version and use the back button to return.

Public Domain Playing Card Backs and a Blank Card

When developing card playing apps backs of cards are useful. Here is a handful of SVG playing card backs, a few of these designs give a nod to the playing cards used in older versions of Windows.

Finally, here's the blank playing card image, again click on the image for the blank playing card SVG .

If you have found these Public Domain SVG Playing Card images useful please provide a link to this article, it would be appreciated for the hard work that has gone into creating and maintaining this resource. Drop me an email, dan@tekeye.uk with information on your completed project that uses these playing card images and I will add a link to it.