Newest Card

unpopular · Sep 10, 2012

DGMPhotography said:
Note, I am using VistaPrint to print my card - they don't support SVG files, what file format from Inkscape should I use that Vistaprint will accept?

I have no idea how Vistaprint will print this. But being that they are a high volume printer, my bet is that they pretty much take what you give them and run with it.

The problem with giving them an RGB file is that the blacks are overprint with cyan, magenta, yellow and black. This gets into trouble when you have text as the amount of ink surrounding the letters will tend to "bleed in". You may have this problem anyway. What you need to remember is that a press isn't an inkjet, in order to print at a high rate the ink has to be viscous enough to stick to the paper.

So it's really important that your files are fully separated CMYK, and that the black background is black, not a murky mix of overprint screens, your reds are 100% magenta and 100% yellow.

For this particular card, process color is really not the best choice, IMO. Though, I am pretty sure that Vistaprint won't do spot color. Spot color would allow the reds to be completely solid red ink. You could run a varnish over the black and leave out the logo, or varnish the logo and have a matte black.

It's too bad, because there are so many cool options which could really make your card stand out, and overall quality would be significantly better. I mean, yeah, I'm sure you'll get an OK card from VistaPrint, but it's not going to be as sharp or vibrant as if you had it done properly. Of course, a quality, local print shop isn't going to print 250 cards for a pocket change either, and you'll probably need to commit to a larger run to make it cost effective.

FYI - Inkscapes native format is SVG, but can produce PS, EPS and iirc PDF. However, I have never printed from inkscape, so I don't know what kind of files it actually produces. What I can tell you though is that they're not going to be ideal.

DGMPhotography · Sep 10, 2012

Yes, my image is CMYK and VistaPrint accepts PDF so rastering does not occur, or so I read. I am just worried how gradients will turn out - I just wish I could just one so I could see a sample of what it would look like.