Setting up the "Poker Size" cards and other various cards that you wish to create.

So many of you are probably dealing with printers for the first time, some you probably already learned this valuable lesson. So here goes, when you are starting up odds are you will be doing all the art work (unless you get somebody to do it for you.) If your getting this done your self you will probably want to make a nice prototype that you can take to places like FedEx Office, SPOD, The game Crafters, etc... what ever the case, I will show you how to set up your files so that they come out to the standards you want without wasting much money on additional prints and so forth. Remember when you mess up, YOU mess up not the printer, unless of course they give you paper that looks as if it was ran over by 20 trains and then sent to the moon for space exploration. If that is the case then yes complain to your hearts content. However odds are that typography errors, color mismatch, and so forth tend to be on the creators end.

Remember this! YOUR MONITOR IS NOT AN INDICATOR OF HOW THE PRINTER WILL PRINT YOUR PRODUCT. with that in mind when you start on a project always start with CMYK, Unless you know how PANTONE colors work, id suggest steering clear and just working with CMYK. You will learn that RGB to CMYK conversions tend to give dramatic effects sometime, however like I mentioned Before, if it fails its because you dropped the ball somewhere during the design process.

What is bleed? Bleed my fellow enthusiasts is additional color information that regardless of information you do not care if it gets cut off. In fact you WANT all of this to be cut off perfectly from your image. If you ever wanted to know how off the Die Cutter or Blade your printer is using make the bleed area a prominent color different from your boarder. This will show you how off their cuts come out, not to mention how off their printers can be. One thing that many people do not know about printers is that, when the printer prints on two sides it tends to be off centered in one side. There are methods to compensate for this potential disaster and as a Former Printer(Docucolor 250, Xerox5500, Xerox 6060, Xerox 4110, Yes even Konika machines) my self I can tell you it is RARE when you get perfectly aligned prints. Many people in the industry will often be shady and not tell you exactly what is going on in the back... however I can tell you a lot of problems in terms of quality control do happen.

Why did this print come out darker than this one? Sometimes you will see varying degrees of print quality, pick up a few older Magic the Gathering cards and some newer ones, you will notice that some of the cards a bit darker. Not so prominent that you can cheat in game, however I can answer a few of the reasons why. Printer s like Carta Mundi use huge machines that are tons bigger than your Print on Demand places. and what tends to happens often is the following.
Machine Overheating, when the machine over heats the toner tends to get darker.
Lack of Fuser Oil, Oh the days that I had to refill my machines with this crazy stuff. you would think that this oil mess is nonsense, a well maintained machine can give you great quality.
Color Calibration, Most people do not follow this rule, but most Xerox Machines and so forth is best to Color Calibrate before the start of a new project. The color calibration process doesn't take long however, this can make or break a print.

However, the previous stuff I just talked about is out of your control and is on the printers end. So always make sure that as you quality check the prints you received that you bring up problems that may have fallen through the cracks. I've been there and done that and its a pain in the behind to rerun thousands upon thousands of prints.

What do you have control of? Well for starters you have control of setting up your files correctly. Always remember this simple rule when you are preparing your work. 300 DPI! You may get by with 150 (trust me, I've done it, and I've also suggested it.) However when you are ready for your final prints 300 DPI no more no less. Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Illustrator, Etc... most if not all of these software's can easily make its measuring system conform to you. You prefer the Metric system by all means. You know what Picas translates to once printed. You already know what 1000x1000 px @72dpi, 96dpi, or what ever other resolution will come out as when printed. then by all means, knock your self out. However in order to add your bleed from the center of your canvas you must add a total of 1/4 to the final canvas. The american way tells you that if a 2.5 inch by 3.5 inch card needs a bleed then you must as .25 to it. Simple addition will leave you with 2.75x3.75 inches. However remember that you are adding this to the center of the file so each side will gain 1/8 so when you submit your file you have the .125" covered on both sides.

Besides the bleed you have what is the next .25" space that has the potential of getting cut off. However most die cutters or blades will be of about 2cm from the start of the cut, and so this is the reason why the bleed will matter, because sometimes machines get misaligned and well the last thing you want is vital information getting removed from your cards or boards.

Finally, when you are ready to create your .PDF files remember to save as a COPY. never never save your final PDF as Layers. this will only make your files bigger and give the printers a harder time when it comes to print. For those of you that decide to work on Illustrator, InDesign. or even Page Maker. remember that these programs do not safe FONT information. So you have to either 1. Convert ALL of your text to outline. OR create a package that contains the fonts. But safe the trouble of creating a package and just convert all your text to outline. Additionally take about 2-3 days going through the text of your cards. you will often find typos on the cards after a day or so of you not starring at the monitor. Additionally get a friend or bum off the streets to read it and find any errors. Fix any and all errors before hitting that golden submit button.

Okay, so now for the good part... for all you that have a copy of Photoshop, I am attaching a Simple Templete for Poker sized cards. This file contains simple information of what I just discussed additionally it contains 5 different methods to use the canvas. You have Split in 2, Into Quarters, Diagonals towards the left and right, and finally Cross. What would use use these formats for is beyond me... however if you use the starting templete correctly you will not need to worry about anything going wrong. Also there is a small quick Frame that you can work with if you really want to... This one has Rounder corners on the inside as opposed to the square corners that you see when you first open the file.

The file can be found: https://sites.google.com/site/lividvisage/ZonesofProduction.psd