[marie500]

Like one of the other posters, I am trying to make refrigerator magnets. I’m using magnetic peel & stick business card magnets. Then print my own photos on blank business cards. (Like the other poster I know they’ll be flimsy but mine will be for decoration only.)

But the problem is - I can’t create my design the right size so it prints out as business card size. I can't make a business-card size rectangle in Paint to use as a template - it's never business-card size size when printed. Onscreen it looks exactly right - doesn’t print the way it looks. How can I create an image that is business-card-size when printed? I need a blank template to repeatedly paste different photos onto.

Also, can I print business cards individually? -like how you print one mailing label at a time in Word? Because I won't need hundreds of them, just one of each photo or design to make one magnet.

FYI, attachment shows the product I will use.

[PopPicker]

Hi Marie, you need to make sure your image size that you create is the same size as a business card. Unless you have business card software which will do it for you. Otherwise using a program like Irfanview where you could open your Paint image and resize accordingly.

Good luck

PP

[slipe]

Try printing from the freeware Irfanview. Select print and check “Custom”. Check to preserve the aspect ratio and put your print size in the width. It should also come out correctly in the height if you have the image in the proper proportions for a credit card. Put the image in the upper left to start with “Center image” unchecked. Figure out how much top and side margin you need to print the upper left label. Leave the top margin and increase the left margin the right amount to print the next label, etc.

Word envelopes and labels has a large list of standard labels. If yours are there you can select it and go to details. It will give you the top and side margins.

Word will print single labels rather than the entire sheet. You just determine the row and column. Word help says you can insert a graphic by selecting where you want the graphic on the label. Then go Insert>Picture. Find the image and double click it. You can move the picture to fill the label and resize it. I can’t get it to work though. Whenever I have the label dialog up I just get a doink when I try to get into Insert. You might give it a try as it is supposed to let you print one label at a time. Or consult Word help to see if you can make more of the instructions than I can.

[marie500]

I started out thinking it would be so easy to print business cards on the computer but it's hard! Maybe the problem is that I'm making them with all graphics instead of mostly text.
I didn't find Iview's resizing to be the solution - my pictures won't resize exactly to 3½" x 2" so Iview adjusts them in a way that makes mathematical-measurement-sense, which isn't the size I want. Have you been able to resize photos to 3½" x 2" in Iview? It comes close, but they still aren't exact.
I might be luckier in Word. There is a business card "label" size available. It calls up a page of business-card sized rectangles (that's good!). I pasted different photos in each one,. Iview came in handy here; I resized first, in a ballpark-way. Word seemed to make them fit with minimal further input or resizing on my part. In preview, anyway.
There are other various problems and questions but I'm still working on it.
Thanks for the tips on what to do, & where to try to get it done.

[slipe]

I just printed a business card from Irfanview with 3.5 X 2 set in custom and it came out exactly that size. If you have “Aspect ratio” checked and aren’t getting the exact height when you enter the 3.5 width then your image isn’t sized correctly. You can make custom sizes in this little freeware and get them exact: http://ekot.dk/programmer/JPEGCrops/

I had problems printing labels that someone had e-mailed me once. It turned out that my old HP printer had a setting to fit the image to the page and it was resizing just enough to miss perfectly printing the labels. I turned that off and they were fine. My Canon doesn’t have that setting so I can’t duplicate it. Have a look at your printer properties.

[marie500]

Was it already a "business card" when you printed from Iview? I mean, was the image already the correct size and proportions? (was it an actual business card?) Or was it a random photo ~like your dog~ as all my failures are?

I'm going to try JPEGCrops. Thanks for the new tip because that seems to be the main problem.

[slipe]

I made business cards for all of the officers and committee chairmen in an organization I belong to. I just set them up in Photoshop and printed out sheets, but I saved both the individual cards in case I had to change them and the full sheets in case someone needed more. I printed one of the individual cards from Irfanview. It was 1050 X 600 pixels, which is the right ratio for a business card.

If you don’t have the ratio right you will always have problems. JPGCrops will do that for you after you set up a custom 3.5 X 2 template. If you don’t want to bother to get the ratio right you can just uncheck “Aspect ratio” in Irfanview and set 3.5 in the width and 2 in the height. Irfanview will squish it so it fits. I would make it right before I tried printing though.

I just built my cards from scratch by making a 3.5 X 2 empty file at 300 PPI. I dragged in the logo and used a nice font with a dark color I sampled from the logo. I printed them on 8.5 X 11 light beige index stock. I sprayed the cards with the cheap clear spray paint from Wal-Mart. It dries quickly and brings out the colors, leaving a nice finish. It also waterproofs them to the point where damp fingers won’t cause the ink to run. Everyone was quite pleased with them.

[marie500]

Question about JPEGSCrop - it doesn't have the measurement 3.5"x2" on its menu as a size to choose to crop to.

[slipe]

As is said in my previous two posts you can make your own custom sizes. I just tried the program a while back to see if it worked and deleted it. But unless they have changed it making a template was pretty easy.

[marie500]

whoops, sorry- yes you did. It was easy to make the template myself. It's doing what you said it would, it's easy to use, and I think it's doing a really good job! This will be handy for other image projects as well. Thanks for the good advice.

[TheWhiteSeal]

Hi all,

On the subject of printing mailing labels i would have to admit i never had much luck with getting them printed. It seemed i was spending most my time messing around with the printer rather than printing out the labels. In the end i decided to give up on the whole DIY idea and i found a british labels company instead to print out my mailing labels, they saved me so much time and hassle.

[Hughv]

Avery offers free software for use with their products.
Simple and easy:
http://www.avery.com/us/Main?action=...twarecode=3200