Posted by Drew Fulton on October 25, 2007 at 10:46 AM
I am considering putting together a couple notecard lines and am wondering if anybody here has experience with any printers out there. I have used Photographer's Edge and printed my own cards using card stock but I am planning to print bulk to reduce cost per card and produce a higher quality card.
If anyone has any suggestions I would be very pleased to hear them. Thanks!
Drew
Posted by Bill Chambers on October 25, 2007 at 10:33 PM
Hi Drew. I don't know what definition you're using for "bulk", so this may not be any help. I print my own cards. I visited several local printers, and could have reduced the price/card a fair amount if I opted to purchase minimum run of 5000 cards. Anything under that amount didn't really reduce the price that much. I decided against that, but not because of the quantity issue. Out of all the printers I visited, none of their color quality suited me. I simply lost too much color quality in the change from Adobe 1998 (RGB) to CMYK. I don't know if that was because of the nature of the beast, or because these printers were just lax or didn't understand color management very well. They were quite shocked when I compared cards I had printed versus their proofs; I was too!
The printer I use to print cards is my Epson R2400. Great results, but probably not the cheapest way to go.
Posted by Steve Foss on October 26, 2007 at 12:36 AM
I print gift cards for spouses/loved ones of photo excursion clients and other fine art cards on my Epson R300, mostly on heavyweight matte or rag papers. Yeah, the Epson R300. A card should last a couple years, not a couple thousand years.
I also have seen a marked difference in my RBG printing compared with some shops who use the traditional CMYK. It doesn't have to be that way. My wife, a computer graphic designer and former pre-press manager and newspaper pre-press troubleshooter, can take an RGB image and produce a CMYK print so fine it's amazing, but most print shops don't seem to have that ability. Dunno why.
Drew, I use White House Custom Color in St. Paul, Minn., for a lot of my printing, and they print very nice cards for less money than I print myself, when I consider my time (the largest factor), ink, paper and wear on the printer. These days, my in-office printers sit idle most of the time. The only time I shake the dust off one of them is to make a card or two for excursion folks or a very short run of Christmas cards for loved ones. Or once in awhile a print for a local client who simply can't wait the day or two it takes for WHCC to come to my door.
Over the last year or two, and after doing a cost analysis and weighing all options, I've decided my time is much more effectively spent shooting and post-processing than it is dicking around with printers, particularly since there are plenty of good print shops out there who care about excellent quality and work hard to ensure the client is happy. It takes a time investment to locate and build a relationship with a print business, for sure. But once that's done, when I press the button to transmit an electronic order I can walk away, pick up my camera pack and head into the woods to turn my vision into images instead of farting around with ink and paper.
OK, it was a LONG .02, but just my .02 nonetheless.
Posted by Drew Fulton on October 26, 2007 at 1:04 AM
Bill and Steve,
Thanks for your responses. Both of you have some great points. I don't want to spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer and it simply isn't feasible to try and create Photographer's Edge cards on any sort of scale large enough to generate income. Thats why I am trying to find someone to do the printing for me. So far I have found a few places online, www.pelicanprint.com seems to be the best option so far. Still have some looking to do though.
Thanks again.
Posted by Dan Baumbach on October 26, 2007 at 10:16 AM
You can get note cards printed through Modern Postcard, www.modernpostcard.com.
Discussion
4 repliesIf anyone has any suggestions I would be very pleased to hear them. Thanks!
Drew
The printer I use to print cards is my Epson R2400. Great results, but probably not the cheapest way to go.
I also have seen a marked difference in my RBG printing compared with some shops who use the traditional CMYK. It doesn't have to be that way. My wife, a computer graphic designer and former pre-press manager and newspaper pre-press troubleshooter, can take an RGB image and produce a CMYK print so fine it's amazing, but most print shops don't seem to have that ability. Dunno why.
Drew, I use White House Custom Color in St. Paul, Minn., for a lot of my printing, and they print very nice cards for less money than I print myself, when I consider my time (the largest factor), ink, paper and wear on the printer. These days, my in-office printers sit idle most of the time. The only time I shake the dust off one of them is to make a card or two for excursion folks or a very short run of Christmas cards for loved ones. Or once in awhile a print for a local client who simply can't wait the day or two it takes for WHCC to come to my door.
Over the last year or two, and after doing a cost analysis and weighing all options, I've decided my time is much more effectively spent shooting and post-processing than it is dicking around with printers, particularly since there are plenty of good print shops out there who care about excellent quality and work hard to ensure the client is happy. It takes a time investment to locate and build a relationship with a print business, for sure. But once that's done, when I press the button to transmit an electronic order I can walk away, pick up my camera pack and head into the woods to turn my vision into images instead of farting around with ink and paper.
OK, it was a LONG .02, but just my .02 nonetheless.
Thanks for your responses. Both of you have some great points. I don't want to spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer and it simply isn't feasible to try and create Photographer's Edge cards on any sort of scale large enough to generate income. Thats why I am trying to find someone to do the printing for me. So far I have found a few places online, www.pelicanprint.com seems to be the best option so far. Still have some looking to do though.
Thanks again.
- Dan.