DIY

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!

You Should Know: Layers & Flattening in PS

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The Importance of Understanding Layers & Flattening in Photoshop 

Photoshop Layers

Photoshop is a very diversified tool that can help you make minor touch-ups to a photograph or complete the creation of an artwork. Either way, you may or may not have heard about layers. With layers you have the ability to efficiently edit different elements of your image without the worry of mistakenly losing other parts or your design. Layers accomplish this by allowing you to manipulate individual layers with filters, editing tools, and more. You can even change the order of your layers.

Flattening Your Layers

So what is the big deal within flattening an image in Photoshop and why might it be important when it comes to your printing?

  1. First, the biggest thing you will notice, depending on how many layers you had, is a reduction in file size. Flattened files can be more easily transferred for print in this reduced size.
  2. Second, you will no longer be able to manipulate the individual layers…simply because they are no longer there. We suggest saving a copy of your layered file, just in case you need to get back in there and edit a thing or two.
  3. Third, all vector artwork, including text, will be rasterized (converting into pixels). This will prevent your fonts from defaulting to some undesirable font you were not expecting. The rasterization will normally prevent issues with transparency as well.

How to Flatten Layers

There are a few different ways of flattening your artwork in Photoshop. One of the quickest is to locate the menu button on the layers window tab. Click the menu button to bring up a list of options and simply select Flatten Image.  

You can also find the Flatten Image command in the Layer menu at the top of your screen.

Photoshop has so many features so we hope this mini-tutorial helps you in the creation of your artwork and designs. Happy creating!  

View this on our website: http://www.catprint.com/pages/setting-up-your-files/photoshop-layers-and-flattening

How QR Codes Can Help You

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QR Codes: Quick Response Codes.

Many people don’t know that QR codes have been in use for about a decade now in Japan’s automobile industry. However, recently QR codes have shown up in everyday usage. They are kind of like improved bar codes! Bar codes have a maximum capacity of 20 numerical digits and make it easy to keep track of products in a warehouse or supermarket. However, QR codes are able to contain thousands of alphanumeric characters, which allows it to be scanned and used versatilely.

Try scanning this with a QR reader!

Try scanning this with a QR reader!

You can generate your own QR Code!

There are a number of QR generators online that are free. You can even get a little more creative and have them custom designed with your logo within the QR Code.

qr code catprint logo

Now try scanning this one!

 

How do you use it?

You simply need a QR code scanner/reader app on your phone, which you can download in your app store for free. When you scan the QR code, it takes you to the direct URL for what the QR code was meant for.

What can it be used for?

QR codes can be on basically any type of media such as business cards, flyers, posters, shirts, cups, whatever you want, and link them to these items and much more:

  • Webpage URL
  • Full Contact Details such as a vCard or meCard
  • Phone number
  • Product Info or ordering
  • Special offers and coupons
  • Event page
  • Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks
  • YouTube video
  • Physical address including maps
  • App Store Download
  • Skype Call
  • SMS Message
  • Surveys
  • Email Address or Message

A Small Price for Management

If you use a website to generate a QR code that also has QR code management, by paying a small price, you can use the QR code management to change the destination address after your QR code has been created or printed. This is especially helpful if you have made an error or need to make an update to the URL or basic information.

Tracking and Analyzing

QR Codes can be tracked and analyzed to see where the QR codes were scanned, which is very helpful to see where and what type of marketing has been successful. For example, you can create a QR code for a billboard poster, and then a separate QR code for flyers that you pass out to people, and compare which form of media advertising has obtained the most response.

Simple, Easy, and Versatile

Maybe next time you’ll put a QR code on your prints with CatPrint!

Paper? Papyrus? Papyrus Paper?

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Paper? Papyrus? Papyrus paper?

The term “paper” itself comes from the word “papyrus”, which is the plant that the Ancient Egyptians processed to write on. However, papyrus isn’t actually paper. The Egyptians sliced the stem of the papyrus plant into thin strips and pasted them together until they formed something that looked like scrolls and sheets. This is not how you create paper today.

papyrusmaking

From Goopy to Sheets

To actually make paper, you need fibres. Fibres can be from various tree barks, cotton, and many other natural sources.  The fibres are then soaked and mashed into a goopy mold, the mold is then pounded into really thin sheets, and finally hung or laid out to dry.

Paper > Bamboo + Silk

The invention of paper is credited to a man named Ts’ai Lun, a Chinese official back in 105 A.D. During this time, China was writing on either silk or bamboo sheets. The issues with this method were that silk took too long to cultivate and process to create the scrolls, and bamboo was heavy to transport. Not only were they problematic, but they were also expensive and hard to come across (just think about the effort in processing, shipping, and handling these raw materials 2,000 years ago). You couldn’t readily call CatPrint and say, “This is the type of stock that I want my books to be printed on.”

chinese bamboo writing

At this time, the growth of literature also created the need for cheaper and readily accessible writing material. Ts’ai Lun invented the first sheets of paper from pounding the wet pulps of the bark of mulberry trees, rags, hemp, and old fish nets and leaving it out to dry for about a day. Now, instead of having to pay heavy prices or waiting for the next shipment of silk and bamboo, you could just make paper. The best thing about this was that it was easily accessible, and just about anyone could do it if they had the time and material!

Paper Today

Despite this process dating to almost 2000 years ago, we are still using this method to create sheets of paper now, just at a more rapid and advanced technological level. Now we have tree farms dedicated to being cut down for the creation of paper. There is  equipment to chip the wood in preparation for it to become pulp. Complex machines are used instead of hand-macerating the pulps into sheets. Instead of hanging out the pulps to dry for days, hot rollers quickly dry the pulp into paper in a matter of minutes.

Think of how instant and readily accessible papermaking seemed to be 2000 years ago, yet is now even more instant. CatPrint already has 30+ different types of paper ready for you to choose from, which you can see and feel in our sample booklets. Try out our Instant Quote and order your prints today!

Sample Booklet

Just For Fun

Here’s a fun link on how to make your own paper at home!

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Paper

PMS: Not What You Think!

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What is the Pantone Matching System?

Pantone Colors are colors within the Pantone Matching System that make it easier to match colors across different printers. It is especially useful so that if you talk to a graphic designer in California, they can match the color you want with the printer in New York, and your prints can come out in the exact colors that you want!

Each color within the system has a specific Pantone number which allows everyone who utilizes the Pantone system to know how much of certain inks to put together to create a specific color. These are organized in sheets with the color on top and the number on the bottom.

pantone_color_chart712-814

The History of the Pantone Matching System

The Pantone system was created around 1962 when a part-time Pantone Print Company employee and Chemistry student named Lawrence Herbert wanted to figure out a better way to organize the 60 or so pigments that Pantone had to print on.  Herbert narrowed down the 60 pigments to just 12 colors that could be mixed and matched in specific ways to make every other color.  Due to Herbert’s chemistry background, he came up with mathematical formulas to help decide exactly how much of each color would go into making the other colors.  When Herbert got a handle on this, he bought out the printing segment of Pantone for $50,000 (because the other side of the company was exactly that much in debt) and started systematizing the colors in order to universalize his newly made system.  

Herbert Solves Kodak’s Problem

Herbert realized that not having universal colors for printing was especially a problem when Kodak had multiple companies printing the packaging for their products.  The multiple companies would print the packaging with different yellows, leaving some packages darker than others.  Customers thought that the darker packages were older and meant the product inside had gone bad.  When the Pantone Matching System was released, Kodak no longer had a problem with merchandise staying on the shelves due to the consistent color of their packaging.

Pantone Colors are Important

Since the first universalized color system was made, Pantone has continued to create color systems for textiles, plastics, as well as other types of materials so that everyone can have a standardized color system.  There is also the color guide which is a huge book of all of the colors that has a Pantone number. Different countries and states (including Texas) even claim Pantone numbers for their flags.  

You may have also heard about the Pantone Color of the Year! Allegedly, there is a secret committee that have a secret meeting in a secret location in Europe to decide on the Pantone Color of the Year!  

This year’s color is Emerald, and here is a chart so you can see the colors for the past 13 years.

color-of-the-year