How to get the most visually impressive prints for your customers
There are several factors that impact how good your printed inserts look:
- Printer and ink/toner
- Printer settings and maintenance
- Media (paper/card)
- Artwork
This article explores each of these to see how you can get the best print possible. For hardware and consumables see our detailed guide.
Printer and ink
The quality of the printer you use plays a huge part in the resulting print. For more information, refer to our recommended printer and suppliers in the above link.
In addition to selecting a good printer, it is essential to use high-quality ink or toner. Be mindful that not all compatible refill cartridges provide the same level of colour accuracy. If you do opt for compatible cartridges, compare their colours with prints made using the original cartridges to ensure satisfactory results.
Printer settings and maintenance
Check the manual for your printer to ensure you're setting it up correctly for the type of media you're using and the quality you want to get out of it.
Print quality setting
For Epson inkjet printers, printing at a high-quality setting typically results in slightly longer print times. Standard print quality settings may speed up printing because the print head moves across the paper in large blocks.
Using standard quality can sometimes introduce faint white line gaps across the page when printing large colourful designs. If you're printing mainly text on a very light background, this is often not noticeable. These lines may become more pronounced over time if the print head is not properly aligned.
We default to high-quality printing because the additional time (about 2 seconds per print) is mostly worth the increase in quality. If speed is critical then you may prefer to opt for standard quality.
if you're downloading prints from your ecom platform, you control the quality through the printer controls on your operating system. If you are a Penny Black Scale customer, print quality can be controlled in our app Settings. If you are a 3PL customer, contact your 3PL to discuss quality settings.
Cleaning and maintenance
Most printers have automatic cleaning programmes which are run periodically, but we recommend looking at all of the maintenance programs that your printer offers (especially print head alignment), and running these monthly. This will reduce blurriness which can creep in after heavy use.
Print heads can become blocked if the ink dries, but this is usually only if the printer is not used regularly (at least once per month). If you do notice colours or areas missing in the printed result, run a print head clean.
Media
See our detailed guide on procurement specs above, but if you have concerns over visual quality, aim for the whitest possible unfinished card with minimal grain/texture.
However, if the card is too smooth it can increase the likelihood of jams. There's a balance to be struck here between grain, thickness, jams and cost.
Artwork
Colours
To achieve accurate colour reproduction, it is important to design your artwork and save it in the RGB colour space, preferably using the sRGB colour profile. While printers operate using the CMYK colour model, desktop printers are specifically calibrated to convert RGB files into CMYK on their own, utilising unique profiles.
When working with vivid or bold colours, it's important to recognise low-cost inkjet printers won't produce the same results as professional printers. Consider positioning more of your bright content on the preprinted side of your inserts, or alternatively, explore using a toner printer, which may yield bolder colours.
Images
Resolution
Ensure any images you use are added to your designs at 300 DPI (dots per inch). Below is a table showing the size in pixels of a full page for each common media size.
| Media Size | Metric Size | Pixels |
|---|---|---|
| A6 | 105 x 148mm | 1240 x 1748 |
| A5 | 148 x 210mm | 1748 x 2480 |
| A4 | 210 x 297mm | 2480 x 3508 |
Ensure any full-size images you incorporate into your designs meet or exceed the specified dimensions. If the image is intended to occupy only a portion of the design, resize it accordingly to fit that specific area of the page.
Professional design packages such as Adobe InDesign will format images appropriately based on the canvas that you create. By creating an A6 canvas at 300 DPI, it will know to scale down the images to suit this canvas (so you don’t need to worry about pixels yourself). However, not all tools will do this.
As a general rule, go with high-resolution images where possible.
Although some printers, including the recommended Epson models, are capable of printing at higher resolutions like 600 DPI, using such settings results in significantly larger file sizes. This can lead to longer transfer and processing times, increasing the overall print time. The Penny Black platform optimises all generated PDFs to 300 DPI before printing.
Quality
When saving or inserting a digital image, such as a JPG, you have the option to select the quality level. Keep in mind that higher-quality settings result in larger file sizes, which may lead to slightly longer printing times.
Through our extensive testing, we've observed that the impact of image quality is often less significant than that of resolution, though this can vary depending on the type of image. For photographs, a lower-quality setting is typically acceptable, with 70% recommended (50% can even generate good results). Conversely, when dealing with images that include text, it is crucial to use a higher quality setting of 85% or more to ensure that the text remains sharp and clear, avoiding any distortion.
We do have a 2 MB limit on the size of files that you can upload to the platform, but this limit is designed to take into account high-quality files of the appropriate resolution and quality settings. If your file exceeds the limit, you'll need to reduce either the resolution or quality setting of your images before re-saving them to PDF.
Simplifying designs
As a final option, if you've got the recommended printer, paper, and ink along with an optimised artwork, consider either simplifying the personalised design and moving more of the vibrant and colourful content to the pre-printed side, which will benefit from professional printing quality.
A good example of this is shown below:
|
|
Personalised side |
The personalised side is designed to be clean and professional, ensuring quick and cost-effective printing while looking great, even when using standard quality settings.