Printing Images on Card stock.

Greetings!

So I've been away from this group for sometime. This is one group with a wide enough foot print to find an Expert! Every year I do a bit of print on demand birthday and holiday cards. This year I went all in and bought an Epson P8000. Now I am looking into & know that with printer I should be able to print on card stock 100 lb glossy. Question is will I want to run the back side through the printer to print a message on the inside of said cards? Most currently I have used the double sided Matte paper exactly as stated, however Its "matte" :^( I can score, trim, finish the cards no problem so a larger sheet of paper is ideal $ wise versus a standard pre-scored product.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

I use double sided matte paper in my P800 for this purpose, although its only 44 or 48lb. Walmart has A9 size envelopes that fit 8.5x11 paper folded once. Burnishing the fold makes the crease in the matte paper neater.

You can give it a try. Inkjet printers will print on most any paper made of wood pulp or cotton rag (synthetic papers are a different story). The problem is, if the paper isn't specially coated, the ink tends to get absorbed too deeply into the paper. This makes the print less saturated and less sharp. Different papers will react differently to this. Typically, pictures and such will look terrible. But text might look alright. Perhaps not as bold and crisp as you may want, but it might be passable. You might experiment with different paper profiles, looking for whatever will lay down the most ink. I'd print the inside first and let it dry for an hour or more before printing the front.

Another issue will be getting the front and back to line up properly. This will probably take some experimenting and careful alignment of the paper. Even under the best of circumstances, inkjet printers are terrible at this job. But you can usually cobble something together that's good enough.

Also, try to pint the card with the fold going along the grain direction of the paper. To test the grain direction, hold the paper gently and see which way it folds more easily. Also, score the fold before you fold it with something. In other words, if you're buying single sheets, it might be wise to buy sheets big enough to print them 2 up (2 cards on the same sheet), that way if the paper is going the wrong direction, you can print them 1 up. You'll waste a lot of paper, but you're cards shouldn't break at the spine. Roll paper has the grain going across the width, to allow it wrap around the roll easier. So if you use roll paper, you'll want to print them sideways (with the spine running side to side, across the width of the paper).

Red River pre-scored cards, Moab Entradalopes and Museo Artist Cards are all good choices. Pre-scored and sized for your use. Red River Paper has sets of Templates you can download and use for setting up. These papers are very nice and some excellent choices available for most any type of image.

For fold over messages you generally print the inside message first and the final outer cover image last. Red River Polar Matte, double coated cards make the inside message look very good. Better than uncoated inside by quite a bit. The Entrada and Museo offerings are also very good. Would proabably pay to get a small batch of each and see how they print to help you with final decisions. Have found many images I planned on doing glossy looked better on the matte papers.

I used to print my own postcards - image on one side, postcard stuff on the rear... on glossy clay coated stock I special ordered cut into 8.5x11 (size my printer took back when)

of course I was working at a paper company so such custom orders were not a problem or too expensive

These are all great ideas and helpful, I found that the card stock I have produces an acceptable result for text, therefore I'll be printing the message portion of my cards on the card stock then tipping in the image via heat mount tissue or spray on photo adhesive. For this project which just to be given to family should be good. I am going to also ask a question related to the how you profile your images for printing. That is what colorspace do you initially use when you create a printing only document.

So my process has always been to select Adobe 1998 RGB or SRGB as the document colorspace. Then choose the paper profile in the print dialog..thats somewhat hit or miss - even though I've also always used a Color Spyder for monitor profiling. I use Perceptual under the print dialog also. Should I be tagging or selecting the profile of the paper in the initial file creation???? That is my question.
Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Greg Blank

These are all great ideas and helpful, I found that the card stock I have produces an acceptable result for text, therefore I'll be printing the message portion of my cards on the card stock then tipping in the image via heat mount tissue or spray on photo adhesive. For this project which just to be given to family should be good. I am going to also ask a question related to the how you profile your images for printing. That is what colorspace do you initially use when you create a printing only document.

So my process has always been to select Adobe 1998 RGB or SRGB as the document colorspace. Then choose the paper profile in the print dialog..thats somewhat hit or miss - even though I've also always used a Color Spyder for monitor profiling. I use Perceptual under the print dialog also. Should I be tagging or selecting the profile of the paper in the initial file creation???? That is my question.
Thank you.

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Only apply the profile to the file during the print stage. But in Photoshop, you can select a profile to view a digital proof of what the final print will look like. It's not very accurate, but it can give you a general idea. Go to View -> Proof Setup -> Custom, and select the profile you intend to print from. Just use it as a final check. I wouldn't do you initial edits from there.

Usually with a printer like the P8000, you'll be better off working in an RGB color space versus CMYK. Adobe or sRGB will be fine. Probably best to stick with the one the camera used. For more accurate color reproduction, you should have your printer calibrated with a custom profile made just for your printer and paper. And you should have the profile remade periodically to keep up with any changes. That can be expensive and time consuming, so many people avoid that and just go with the generic ones provided by either the printer or paper company, and adjust their images to fit if necessary. I find it best let the printer manage the profile because sometimes if you adjust it in Photoshop's dialog box it will add that profile to the one in your computer's driver settings, and then you're printing with two profiles at once and that can create problems. Perceptual is good. That setting just adjusts how the printer reacts to colors it can't reproduce, so no setting delivers the perfect print. I usually go with Perceptual or Relative Colormetric first and if that does something I don't like, I try another. That's just a dialogue box asking you where you want to compromise in order to make the print work. There's no universally right or wrong setting there. Just personal preference that may even change depending on the image/medium.

As a general rule, if you're going to print something big, important, or a lot of, it's best to print a small proof and check for any issues before committing more time and money to the finished product. I have a P9000 with a Fiery RIP server and an intergrated xRite Spectroproofer for calibration at work. I rarely have to reprint anything on that or do test prints ahead of time, but I only use one paper on it, and spend lots of time calibrating it and keeping it calibrated. My Epson 9880 at home doesn't run through a RIP server and uses multiple papers. So I run a lot more test prints through it, and while I have custom profiles for it, I generally use premade profiles just for convenience. The digital proof/small test print works pretty well if you've got the time.

Thank you, this is what I was looking for in terms of help.

It sounds like you've made a great investment with the Epson P8000, and we're happy to help you with your question about printing on card stock 100 lb glossy. In regards to printing on the inside of the cards, it is possible to run the back side through the printer as well. However, it depends on the design and layout of your cards. If you're looking for a matte finish, you can always score and trim the cards after printing. That being said, you can also experiment with different types of paper to see which one works best for you. Thanks for reaching out, and let us know if you have any other questions!