Palatinus' OverPower Forum

Hi all

I would like to print out some custom cards that people have posted on here but I am rubbish when it comes to using picture files. Can any one give me some advise on the best way of printing the customs off on a home printer using A4 sized paper. I would also like them to be the correct size but I don't know how the dimensions of a JPEG file relate to dimensions in real life in inces/milimeters.

Thanks.

I might be able to help. I've printed hundreds of homemade from various sites using Microsoft Word's copy, paste and crop functions.   All my numbers are based on inches.  I use 8.5 x 11 cardstock paper (standard size here) to print on and I know you can get 8 cards on a single page.  Two cards must be turned on their side though.

Using Word's picture tool you can crop the image, set text wrapping to 'in front of text' (so you can easily move it around the page, and make the dimensions as follows: Height 3.56 and Width 2.54. You may have to uncheck the 'lock aspect ratio' box.


Not sure how all this American translates to Canadian, but I hope it helps. 

It would really depend on the application you use to print out the pictures and the type of printer you have.

On A4 paper, you could get 9 cards per sheet if you had borderless printing. It would be ideal to stick to inches for calculations because the cards are roughly 2.5x3.5 inch versus the 6.35x8.89 cm of the wonderful metric system.

I would also find a way to scale the cards nicely to fit into the 2.5x3.5 dimensions. Most printers will print at 300DPI or 600DPI, the higher the better. 300DPI is more than enough for prints. When scaling cards, you need to make sure the Resolution (pixels per inch) matches the DPI of the print (pixels are for computer monitors, dots are for printers). From there, it's simple math to blow up the image to the right size.

• 300DPI needs 750x1050 pixels for the image
• 600DPI needs 1500x2100 pixels for the image

Thanks Nostalgic, I did look at word but wasn't sure if they would print properly.

Quote from: Nostalgic on January 12, 2013, 01:20:31 PMNot sure how all this American translates to Canadian, but I hope it helps. 

lol. Not realy, I'm in the UK

Quote from: Jack on January 12, 2013, 02:43:10 PMI would also find a way to scale the cards nicely to fit into the 2.5x3.5 dimensions.

Thanks Jack, is this somthing I can do on paint or would it affect the quality of the picture?

Quote from: Jack on January 12, 2013, 02:43:10 PMIt would be ideal to stick to inches for calculations because the cards are roughly 2.5x3.5 inch versus the 6.35x8.89 cm of the wonderful metric system.

Theres nothing wrong with the metric system. I find it much easier that trying to work out what 3/8 + 11/16 are. 

Paint could work, though using Paint.NET will probably be much more useful than regular Paint. They provide proper methods for upscaling images.

I'm saddened that Canada has only partially adopted the metric system. I find the A series of paper super neat and I wish we had that here instead of "Letter" or "Legal", etc.

I've been doing my customs by ordering prints from photo labs. You can get 2 per 4x6, usually glossy or matte.

That Pain.NET looks complicated.

Quote from: BasiliskFang on January 13, 2013, 09:31:15 AM
I've been doing my customs by ordering prints from photo labs. You can get 2 per 4x6, usually glossy or matte.

Doesn't that get expensive BF?

If all you're using it for is resizing, it's a few simple clicks to do so.

paint.net is like photoshop lite, just use it to resize, 200 dpi @ 500x700 pixels.

usually if you look around for walgreens coupon codes or snapfish you can get them for 6 cents a print (3c/a card) or 50 free prints sometimes. I even saw a coupon where there were 1c prints and all you paid was the shipping.

Someone should do a youtube tutorial

Quote from: BasiliskFang on January 13, 2013, 07:04:54 PM
paint.net is like photoshop lite, just use it to resize, 200 dpi @ 500x700 pixels.

usually if you look around for walgreens coupon codes or snapfish you can get them for 6 cents a print (3c/a card) or 50 free prints sometimes. I even saw a coupon where there were 1c prints and all you paid was the shipping.

Can you provide a little more detail in how you go about having your cards printed? When you mention paint.net, is that a program or a website? I'm trying to print the cards Bios uploaded to the forum, how would I go about getting them to print two cards per page? I'm guessing I would resize per your instructions, and then can I save the file via paint.net to jpeg and then send to Walgreens?

Any help would be appreciated.

Hmm, i'll make a tutorial.