Hi! I absolutely adore your photocard photos! I was curious, how do you plan to print them out in the right size/quality for a photocard? :0 I've always wanted to do some of my own, but I always get stumped at the actual physical card part. If you have any advice, that'd be greatly appreciated!
Hi thank you and great question!
Ok so. It really depends on what you want. Lets start simple and continue with elevating complexity.
What constitutes a basic photocard. It is a laminated piece of cardstock with rounded edges and one/two sided print on it. They do not have standardized sizing necessarily, but you might want to go for a size and aspect ratio that will fit into your typical card sleeve. Pokemon cards are 63x88mm, but you dont have to be tied to it, just keep utility in mind.
Now to problems you need to overcome:
1. Printing it. Surprising to nobody, pain in the ass. Make sure its in cmyk, thats basic. Make sure resolution is 300. Have some bleed, thats for cutting later. Open advanced printer settings, put correct paper type and high quality. A lot of the time image quality can depend on paper itself, id look it up on like reddit or smth. Ok You want to arrange your images on a sheet in a grid manner to maximize on space, make sure that you are saving it in pdf, and that your printer does not fuck with the border size. Why? 1.1 Messes up the actual size of the card. 1.2 Remember two sided printing? Boy get ready. From what i have tried and seen, there is no better way to make sure the images align on both sides of the paper can only be achieved through continuous trial, error, and tweak. Every printer is personalized
2. Lamination. You want your card to be shiny and smooth and immune to the elements. You have options. You can get a laminator, or just get cold laminate sheets. These take a bit to get the technique right but it is feasible. You can get those with laser patterns you can get them holo with hearts whatever your soul desires. You will at this point think ok this is fine im on track
3. Cutting. Now. You have two options. They will both be a pain in the ass. Either a. Cricut or b. By hand or with one of those paper cutters. And you would ask. Why is cricut a pain in the ass? We all wonder this. But in this particular case, if you want your cricut to cut it out properly, you gonna want to do print and cut. Im not gonna get into it rn because this will never end but just know its a pain in the ass and will cut up your work like its nothing for no reason and thats on fragility of technology
4. Corners. Thank god we are here. Just get one of those corner cutting thingies they sell them like. In any stationary store.
If you got here, great news. You have a whole ass photocard. Epic.
Now. What if we want it to have one of those fancy shmancy holo backgrounds or raised surfaces or foil- just get a manufacturer to do it. It requires white ink technique and only manus will have it. I wantt mine to have holo bg so for now im just gonna get them from vograce. Im gonna be doing stickers myself so the process is kinda similar but in any case. Good luck man its a lot
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