Business cards?

chuggs · 06-22-2007

I'm going to try to leave this question as general as possible. My reason for doing so is that if I get too detailed, chances are that I'm going to make an idiot out of myself.

If PS CS2 is the only tool that I have at my disposal, what are the best settings for creating professional looking printable business cards? And would you print them straight from PS, or would you use some other program, perhaps with a template to print sheets with multiple cards at a time?

There, I've done it. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

**tamlin** · 06-22-2007

If you're creating your design in Photoshop, the usual standard for print is a resolution of 300 dpi.

If you're printing them yourself, you might find it more convenient to use a downloadable pre-prepared template rather than try to print direct from Photoshop. Have a look at these links: business card templates - Google Search

terra kengo · 06-24-2007

I used photoshop to create my business cards, then I had them printed by Vista Print (vistaprint.com). They do up to 250 for free, and you pay a nominal shipping charge. I will tell you that with the amount of ink that it takes to print quality business cards, combined with the paper you will waste trying to get everything aligned with your printer, it's well worth it to have them printed professionally. The end cost will be way cheaper for you.

Anyways, here is a link to a template for photoshop for business cards. I uploaded it to my server.

http://www.parallelaxis.com/terra/template.psd

I got my cards three days after I submitted the order, and they are great.

I recommend 300 dpi, too.

chuggs · 06-24-2007

Awesome. Thank you both!

silvertear · 06-25-2007

What great information! Glad I read it

I need to design new business cards and that template will be great since I did have my last ones printed from Vista.

casmoedesigns · 06-27-2007

Well if you dont want to use Photoshop you can use Microsoft Publisher. It has a lot of options on how to design them and how to print them in different layouts. You should try the demo that Microsoft has on their site.

chuggs · 06-27-2007

Actually, Casmoe, now that you mention it, that does bring up the second issue that I may have left too vague. My plan was to use PS for creating the graphics, but I wasn't sure how to go about printing them. I've used the Avery card templates in MS Word with varying levels of success before, but the hangup was maintaining the alignment of the graphics from one card to the next within a pre-perforated sheet template. Even before being sent to the printer, you could see that the vertical alignment on screen would be off from one row to the next. I do have Publisher at work, but I've used it so infrequently that I deleted the desktop icon ages ago. Maybe I'll have to toil around with that... I take it that Publisher is preferred over Word for doing something like this?

**tamlin** · 06-27-2007

I've never used Publisher but I would imagine it would be the ideal tool for that sort of job. However, I have used Word for printing CD inserts and it works very well. I inserted images and blocks of text as drawing objects which I was then able to position exactly on the page. I even managed (after a bit of trial-and-error) to do double-sided printing.

turvas · 06-27-2007

I've also done double-sided printing... by turning the paper around the other way. I would sugest you to ask a professional who works with stuff like that (, but then again not everyone has contacts like me).

*notjustgraphics* · 06-27-2007

It comes down to your design...

If you have a business card with bleed (colour touching an edge), no inkjet printer is going to be precise enough to print to perforated templates without over or under printing .

I've looked long and hard for a pre-made business card template like Avery that has a trap (a small margin between individual cards) but have never found one.

If you're serious about what you want to accomplish with your business cards, create the artwork in Photoshop with a 1/8" bleed all the way around and save it as an .EPS or PRESS .PDF

Then, send it to VistaPrint or E-Print Fast (eprintfast.com) for printing... a low run of 250-500 will be very affordable and probably cheaper than a box of 110 avery templates.

Eprintfast also has templates for all kinds of printed materials including business cards.

Cheers!

Mike.

cowboyonamac · 07-03-2007

I'm on a Mac, so I use Photoshop to get the picture just right then use BeLightSoft's Business Card Composer to make the final cards.

leeshir · 08-09-2007

Hi, This is just a suggestion make your card in a jpg format and put it into a ms word template. Print it out on business card.