catprint walkthrough

CatPrint Walkthrough: Part Five – Envelopes

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If you haven’t been following the CatPrint Walkthrough series, now is your chance to learn about the CatPrint Walkthrough Process!

In the first part, we talked about how Customer Service does the first step in the quality check on your files!

In the second part of the series, we talked about how a Production Specialist will make a second quality check and work with Customer Service to make sure any comments are noted.

In the third part, we talked about how we make daily Printing and Color Maintenance and the importance of doing that twice a day!

In our fourth part of the series, we talked about what finishing is and how finishing is done.

Now we can move on to the next part of the series where we will talk about how the ordering and printing process changes when you request for envelopes with your order!

If you placed an order with envelopes, the last step before packaging and shipping out your printing order is counting your envelopes and including them with your prints. If you are simply ordering blank envelopes to match with your prints, the process is simple: we just count your envelopes, shrink-wrap and label them with your order number, and then send them to packaging and shipping area.

If you had elected for printed envelopes, we process the order much like we do for your prints, but we use a specific envelope printer to print onto your envelopes. We prepress your file, send the file to the printer, count out the envelopes, and then print the file right onto the envelope. The process takes a little extra diligence and monitoring to make sure that the image file is properly aligned and centered onto the envelope the way that you would want them to be. After the printing is complete, the envelopes are counted again to make sure that the correct number of envelopes will be shipped out to you.

Printing Wide Format and Giclée Posters With CatPrint

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Did you know that CatPrint offers archival quality Giclée printing?

Questions you might have about Giclée poster print are:

What is Giclée printing?

How do I set up files for a Giclée job?

What is a wide format job?

How do I set up a wide format or Giclée job through the CatPrint site?

The answers to all of those questions are below:

What is Giclée Printing?

Put simply, Giclée printing refers to fade-resistant, pigment based, archival quality, inkjet printing.

Giclée printing is used when your print job requires the absolute best print quality possible. This type of printing is commonly used for digital art prints and high quality reproductions of traditional art.

What are the File Requirements?

Just like with our toner based digital printing, your file needs to be at least 300 DPI. They should be high-resolution JPGs, PDFs, TIFFs, or PNGs created in CMYK color format.

Additionally, the file dimensions must be EXACTLY the same size as the print dimensions. For example, if you are printing a 24”x36” poster, your files must be 24”x36”. Full bleed jobs need to be sized 1/4″ larger than the final cut size.

Finally, the widest print our HP Inkjet Printer can produce is 44”, so be sure to keep that in mind when designing your files.

What Is Considered a Wide Format Job?

Any print larger than a no bleed 12″x18″ is considered wide format  by CatPrint’s standards.

Prints larger than 12”x18” must be printed using our HP Inkjet Printer, on either our Luster Gloss Poster Paper or Art Quality Poster Canvas which can be selected from the bottom of the paper selection menu on the Order Builder page.

How Do I Set Up a Giclée Job?

If you want your job to be printed on our HP Inkjet Printer, simply select the “Luster Gloss Poster Paper” or “Art Quality Poster Canvas” from the paper menu on the Order Builder page. Afterwards, you can fill in the rest of your print job specifications.

Please note that you do not have to print larger than 12”x18” to use the HP Inkjet Printer; we can do smaller sizes as well! However, please keep in mind that the substrates we now offer can only be printed on one side.

Keep an eye on our social media and monthly newsletters for announcements about new substrates in the upcoming months. Take the survey below if you have a substrate in mind that you would like to see us start carrying!

CatPrint Walkthrough: Part Two – Production Pre-Press

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In the first part of our CatPrint Walkthrough series, we talked about what happens when you place your order.

If you want to know what happens to your order after it is pre-pressed in Customer Service, read on:

After jobs are pre-pressed in Customer Service, they are sent to the Production Queue and go through a second quality check. During this step, a Production Specialist will look for any job comments added to the order, and will make sure the comments are noted. If there are any questions or concerns about your print job or your files, Production places the job on hold. When a job is held, Customer Service contacts the customer about the question or issue. If everything looks good, the job is then sent to print.

production pre-press

Production Pre-Press

CatPrint Walkthrough: Part One – Customer Service

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Introduction to the CatPrint Walkthrough

Want to learn more about how your prints are brought to life here at CatPrint? We feature a different step of the process to give you a full rundown of how your order is made: from Customer Service all the way to the outgoing mail cart!

Part One: Customer Service

Naturally, all orders begin in Customer Service. Our Customer Service team is comprised of Nicole, Matt, and Eileen. They handle all customer inquiries and act as the middlemen between the customers and the CatPrint Production team. Once your order is placed, Customer Service pre-press occurs with reviewing each order and doing the first quality check. They look for common file issues and address any potential concerns with the customer.

CatPrint Customer Service Rep - Eileen

CatPrint Customer Service Rep Eileen and Matt checking your files!