5 Tips for Getting the Perfect Prints

For perfect prints, you won’t likely be able to do it by yourself on your first few attempts unless you are a professional printer yourself. Especially if it’s for an important work-related or a business-related project, it’s probably best to simply contract the job out to a professional printing service provider.

There are lots to choose from. Of course, the bigger the name of the company, the more printing options they’ll be able to offer you.

1st Tip: Personally Vet the Printing Companies Before Making a Decision

Visit their premises and check out their printing facilities. Compare prices and work quality. Ask for references and working guarantees. Ask about their delivery options. If your printing order will entail sharing with them some sensitive information, as in payslip printing, inquire as to how they will ensure strict confidentiality.

If you intend to set up a long-term working relationship with the printing service provider, check out the efficiency of their customer service.

2nd Tip: Pick Your Printing Medium

Once you’ve selected your printing service provider, talk with them and agree on the most appropriate printing medium for your printing job orders. Are you planning to have them print banners and posters, brochures and fliers, company letterheads, business cards and stationery? Do they have inkjet, laser and/or offset printers? What are the sizes and grades of paper do they regularly carry?

Do their paper stock come in a range of finishes and coatings? Do they do vinyl printing? Work with them until you agree on the most appropriate medium that will make for a perfect print for each particular type of printing job you’ll be sending them.

3rd Tip: Work on Your End of the Table by Calibrating and Profiling Your Display

Standardize your monitor’s color and contrast using a calibration device, such as X-Rite’s i1DisplayPro or Datacolor’s Spyder3Pro, so that the editing on your images will reproduce in prints the way you want them. Printing companies will usually allow you to download profiles for the printer/paper combinations they offer. If are comfortable using those profiles to soft-proof and preview your result in Adobe Photoshop, you can take on the job of color correcting your images yourself.

If you’re not comfortable, you can let your printer handle the color correcting. Talk with your printer on whether you should submit your files in Adobe RGB or Pro Photo RGB, or sRGB color space. Check whether they have file-size limits, and whether they’d accept TIFFs, or only JPEG image formats.

4th Tip: Agree with Your Printer on The Image Ratio

If you have photos that doesn’t fit the given dimensions of the photo processing lab’s print size, the printing service provider may do the cropping for you. If you want to control this yourself, you should crop your own image before uploading.

Alternatively, you can get the aspect ratio you want at the largest size, open the image in your image editor, then make a white border around your shot so that the total image area, including the border, matches the print size you’re ordering. If you want to display your print without the border, you would then need to trim it yourself or frame it using a mat that covers the border.

5th Tip: Order Test Strips Before the Final Printing

If you’re not sure of the best paper type to suit the document or graphics, order test strips first. Use your editing software to bunch them up on a single big print, and then have it made on various papers to compare how they will look on each. Or, if you’re not sure how much contrast or brightness will work best on the paper you’ve chosen, send out a similar big print with five or six variations of the image on a single piece of paper.

Once you figure out what works best, you can give the signal to finally run your order.

In case your press for time, and you haven’t found the right printing company for the job you have in mind, you can check out FedEx Kinko‘s new offerings. Now, you can get copy and/or print, signs and/or banners, even photo services at any FedEx Kinko outlets. They also offer PrintOnline options.