Create your own deck art for dummies

Balatro might not have a workshop with custom art for your deck of cards, but look no further. You can make it yourself! It's super easy, barely an inconvience.

How to get started

To create your own fancy art of Waifu's we are going to need a few things:

1. 7-zip, a free archive extraction tool https://7-zip.org/
2. Image editing software that respects transparancy backgrounds like photoshop or Gimp
3. Very basic image editing skills, which could be supplemented by Youtube. Search for removing backgrounds.
4. Pixel art
5. Coffee

This Google search shows a few examples of instruction videos that will teach you how to remove backgrounds and copy your waifu's to another image

Extracting the necessary files

Navigate to your Balatro local files

Now right click on Balatro.exe and choose to open archive as a 7-zip archive

Go to folder Resources\Textures\2x (*)

Extract all the files to a temporary folder on your desktop where you will them
(8BitDeck.png is the main image that we are going to work with, but if you're ambitious you could also alter Joker or Tarot images, and basically any icon in the game)

* Check your settings in Balatro if you are using "Pixal Art Smoothing" if yes choose 2x. If no choose the 1x files
Thanks for User R, in the comment section, for pointing this out

Time to start editing

Open 8BitDeck.png and the pixel art file in your image editing software

Remove the background from your own art, select that layer and copy it to the 8BitDeck.png file

You have to delete the original art. Resize your own art in the available space for the each card


This is how it looks like before making any changes



This is what it will look like after removing the original art and placing your own. Use the numbers or letters of the cards to determine the maximum size of your art for each card

Replacing the original deck of cards with your own

Navigate to Balatro's local files and use 7-zip to open Balatro.exe as an archive just like step 1

Now copy your new made deck 8BitDeck.png to folder Resources\Textures\2x, replacing the original file

Close the archive and let's start up Balatro to see if it works. Just start a new run and open your deck preview in the bottom right corner.

(If you're unsure if you got the right file or are going the right direction, just change a color of 1 card from the 8BitDeck.png file and replace the original. Open Balatro and check if the color changed.)


And there we go



Congratulations!

Now that you know how, send me all your carefully crafted waifu decks!

[Hithere]

Also- thanks for the cool guide!

[Hithere]

I was gonna make a pitch meeting reference but I see a LOT of people have already beat me to it, so I'll need you to get ALL the way off my back about this.

[Naradoxy]

Works perfectly! Thanks! also I didn't know 7z could open exes like that lol

[Kotik-Narkotik]

'merica moment
you balatro cannot be just "balatro", .exe is windows system file format for executable, it's can be just not showing up due to settings in your file explorer

[graysonkarnell]

My balatro is not a .exe, its just "Balatro"

[ElKoita]

Hello, I followed all the steps but when adding the modified .pngs, if I press the "Add" option I get the error "The operation is not absorbed for this folder" and it also does not let me drag the .pngs to their corresponding folders, how can I solve this?

[SuddenDe4th]

Just tried it with the Jokers but did not get any errors (using photoshop)
Check if you are still respecting the transparant background and do no exceed the sizes of each cards (draw within the lines)
Certain image editing software does not keep all the correct "PNG" settings, so it would be best to use photoshop or otherwise one of the mentioned alternatives. MS paint prob isn't going to cut it

[kidiot turbo]

For Jokers.png I seems to get "Access denied" error after modifying the file. I used 7zip for extraction and replacement

[granger-monarque]

im assuming the same process can be applied to the jokers and other assets i assume? It definitely worked for the default deck itself but when i tried editing the collab decks it didnt rlly work and didnt change anything. Same goes for the jokers, which is what im experiencing now

[starbagu3tt3]

THANKS i didnt know about 7zip, thats all i needed