Revision as of 23:43, 18 November 2016

The Art Library is the second tab of the Sidebar and is accessible to you for any game you GM for. This tab allows you to search, upload, and organize any JPG or PNG image file that you wish to use in your game.

Dev Note 11/17/2016: This Page is Currently Being Updated

Searching For Art Assets

The Art Asset Search

1. My Library: Any image you have personally uploaded to Roll20 and stored on your account's allotted image storage (quota)
   
   
2. Marketplace Purchases: Any available image from an art set you have bought off the Roll20 Marketplace
   
   
3. Pro Sets: When a user subscribes to a Roll20 Pro Subscription, index of Exclusive Token Sets becomes available in-app.
   
   
4. Free Assets: Images from art sets made available to the Roll20 community to use for free in their games. (Note: Not for commercial resale purposes)
   
   
5. Premium Assets: This initially lists a cross section of popular packs from the Roll20 Marketplace, highlighted in pale yellow. These assets have been created specifically for use in Roll20 by community members like you. Marketplace assets can be expanded by clicking on More Premium Assets » to show up to 100 different items and can be purchased directly by clicking on any image which opens up its pack's Marketplace listing in a new window.
   
   
6. From the Web This section is shaded in light blue and pulls images cached from various tRPG image resources around the web.
   
   

Note: Images found From the Web are using search results collected in the first year of Roll20's existence while the Google Search API was freely available. This list of search results are four+ years old at this point, so at times this makes search results occasionally archaic.

The Search Bar

This is where you run your search for art assets. An art search matches your keywords with image file names, tags, or the folder names your assets are stored in.

Roll20 Search Parameters

Searching with more than one keyword is exclusive, helping you refine your search to only assets that match both words.
ex.
red dragon

Inclusive Searches
Optionally, you can use the OR keyword to get an inclusive search, where results will be returned if either word matches any criteria.
ex.
water way or swamp

Exclusive Searches
You can also refine your search further by adding a "-" symbol before a word to exclude all results that keyword matches.
ex.
giant -fire

Image Search Type Drop-Down Menu

Above the search bar is a drop-down menu where you can choose the Image Search Type. This narrows the search to specific tags assigned to images on the Roll20 Marketplace, Pro & Free Assets, and collected resources from various tRPG image sites. This is broken down into four categories: Tokens, Maps, Tiles, Textures, Portraits, and Everything. If you want to cast the broadest net with your search, choose the Everything option.

Search Style Toggle

Also above the search bar is an expanding icon beside the word Search:. This is the Search Style toggle. Clicking on this icon will swap between small and large thumbnail display of the images found in the search results.

Premium Assets & My Library

The Premium Assets View

When not searching for images, below the Search Bar is your image index. There are two indexes that you can swap between at any time are Premium Assets and My Library. Everything under Premium Assets are images that you have not uploaded to Roll20 nor do they count towards your account's image quota when you use them in your games. Folders for Marketplace Purchases, Pro Assets, and Free Assets are listed here.

Everything listed under My Library is content that you have personally uploaded into your games and stored on your Roll20 account. These images in My Library do count towards your image quota.

My Library

My Library View

Any and all image content you upload to Roll20 will be added to My Library. When you toggle to the My Library view in the Art Library, you'll first have two buttons for uploading images and for creation of folders. Underneath that is an area that shows the folder tree (if you have created any). Underneath that is the Recent Uploads image list.

Roll20 supports the following image file types: JPG, PNG, & PDF (upon upload, you'll be asked which page from the PDF will be converted to an image)

Roll20 doesn't fully support GIF files due to the inconsistencies and non-standardization of its file type. Some GIF images will upload to Roll20 with no issue, while others will outright fail. Animated GIFs do not work at all on Roll20.

Uploading Art

There are two methods for uploading art to Roll20. The first way is to click and drag a single image from your file explorer/computer to the Tabletop and it will upload as well as place the graphic where you designated on the Tabletop.

The second way is to click on the Upload button underneath My Library. This pops open a dialog box called Upload Files.... This dialog box has a dashed-border rectangle where you can drag a maximum batch of ten images at a time to upload them all at once. You can also select images one at a time with the Choose a file... button which brings up a file selection menu to browse for files on your computer/device. There is a file size cap for image uploads. If you have a base account, no single image or batch upload can exceed 5MB. For Plus or Pro subscribers, this cap is raised to 10MB.

Note: While your image or batch of images might not reach 5/10MB exactly, if the total file size is very close to the cap, the upload may not process. This is because a small percentage of extra bytes is required to process the upload, which can make you hit or exceed the cap.

All uploaded art, regardless of upload method, is automatically placed into Recent Uploads in chronological order with the most recently uploaded image added to the top of the list.

Recent Uploads

Organizing My Art

There are two different ways to help organize the images in My Library: Folders and Tags.

Folders

Folder View

Tags

Tags are keywords that you can assign to various objects in Roll20, images included. When you run an image search, it will try to match your keywords with any tags you've added to your images. This makes it easier to locate previously uploaded images without having to recall their filename from memory.

Adding Tags: To add tags to an image, you must first be in folder view, either Recent Uploads or a subfolder of your choice. For adding a tag on a single image, click on the smaller version of the image's file name that sits right above the upload date and file size information (the filename automatically becomes its own tag upon upload). This opens up the tag field to enter new tags for the image. Hitting the space bar or enter/return key will create the tag and allow you to enter another. If you want a multi-word tag with spaces, you'll need to copy and paste the multi-word phrase in rather than type it out as a direct press of the space bar auto-completes the tag. If there's a tag you made previously for other images, suggestions of previous tags will appear below the tag field as you type. Pressing the up or down arrow will page through the available choices and hitting the Enter/Return key will set the chosen one as the new tag.

Removing Tags: To remove tags from an image, you first need to bring up the tags field as if you were to add more. Each tag has an X following the tag name. Clicking on this X deletes the tag from the image. Sometimes due to tag length, the name may stretch past the boundary of the tag field. In this instance you may not have access to the X to delete the tag. In this situation, you can also click on a tag, which highlights it in a dark blue and then hit the Delete or Backspace key to remove the tag.

Batch Tagging/Tag Deletion:* You can click on multiple images at a time in folder view to select them as a group. They will highlight the selected images in pale blue. Click on any image a second time to remove it from this selection. While a batch of images is selected right click anywhere among them to bring up an options menu. Two of the available options is Tag Selected and Remove Tag. Selecting either of these two options will pop up a new dialog box asking you to type your desired tag to add or delete respectively from the selected batch of images. Note: You can only add or remove one tag at a time.

*We're aware that this feature currently doesn't work in the Recent Uploads folder view. This is a known bug we hope to address soon.

Optimal Organization Method

We recommend this methodology every time you upload artwork:

1. Upload your art for a given game/page/system
2. Tag your images in the Recent Uploads
3. Sort your images out of Recent Uploads into a sub-folder

If you stay on top of this process each time you upload new images, you'll have an easier time maintaining your art library and your storage quota.

Image Storage Quota

Your storage quota is the amount of art assets that you can upload. It doesn't include art that you use from built-in sets or from web searches, it only includes the space used by images you upload from your computer. Roll20 allows a 100MB quota of art assets to be stored on a base account (the default account type). Roll20 Subscribers are granted larger storage quotas; Plus accounts have a 1,000MB quota and Pro accounts get 2,000MB.

You can check your Storage Quota usage on your My Account page underneath the Account Type & Subscription section on the right side of the page. You can also see it at the top of the Recent Uploads Folder View Window, directly above the first row of image thumbnails and below the red deletion warning message.

Freeing Up Storage Space

Once you hit your storage quota capacity, Roll20 will disallow any further uploads until room is made for them. This is either done by deleting some of your art assets from My Library or upgrade your account to Plus or Pro subscriber status for a larger storage quota.

To delete art assets, you can right click on an image in the Recent Uploads list or Folder Tree and choose Delete Item. This will permanently remove that art asset from My Library and any game that is currently using it. With that in mind, you will want to make certain that the images you are deleting are not necessary for current game content you're actively playing with.

Note: Need more storage? Plus and Pro subscriptions offer more space. Visit our Supporter

Placing Graphics onto the Tabletop

Once you’ve found, purchased, or uploaded the art assets you’d like to use, simply drag and drop it from either the folder view, the Recent Upload list, or from a sub folder onto the Tabletop to add it to your Game.