The one setting that ruins invitations
In your printer dialog, find the scaling option and set it to 100%, Actual size, or None. Do not leave it on "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages".
Fit to page quietly scales your artwork down by a few percent to clear the printer's unprintable margin. A 5 × 7 card comes out at roughly 4.8 × 6.7, which then does not fit the envelopes you bought and does not line up with a paper trimmer. The card looks fine on its own; it only reveals itself when you try to cut it.
Printing at home
- Choose your paper. Card stock between 200 and 300 gsm feels like an invitation. Anything lighter feels like a flyer. Check your printer's manual for the heaviest stock it takes.
- Download the home print sheet. Rather than one card per page, this arranges as many cards as physically fit on a sheet of Letter or A4 at their exact size.
- Set scaling to 100%. As above. This is the step people skip.
- Print one test page on plain paper. Measure the card with a ruler before you print on the expensive stock. If it measures 5 × 7, you are good.
- Cut with a trimmer, not scissors. A guillotine or rotary trimmer costs less than a set of card stock and is the difference between a clean edge and a wobbly one. Cut along the crop marks.
How many cards fit on a sheet
| Card size | US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) | A4 (210 × 297 mm) |
|---|---|---|
| 5 × 7 in | 2 per sheet (turned) | 2 per sheet (turned) |
| 4 × 6 in | 2 per sheet (turned) | 2 per sheet (turned) |
| 5 × 5 in | 2 per sheet | 2 per sheet |
| 3.5 × 5 in (RSVP) | 4 per sheet | 4 per sheet |
These counts assume a quarter-inch unprintable margin, which is typical for home printers, and a small gap between cards to cut into. A printer that can print closer to the edge may fit more.
Using a print shop
For more than about forty invitations, a print shop is usually cheaper than card stock plus ink, and the finish is better. What they need from you:
- A PDF at 300 DPI, not a screenshot and not a JPEG pulled off a phone.
- Bleed included. Ask for "PDF with bleed" - the artwork extends past the cut line so nothing ends up with a white edge.
- Crop marks if they ask for them. Some shops prefer to place their own.
Send them one card and ask for a proof before committing to the full run. A proof costs a few pounds and catches the mistake that a hundred cards would make expensive.
A note on colour
Browsers work in RGB. Commercial presses work in CMYK, which cannot reproduce every RGB colour - bright saturated blues and greens in particular come out flatter on paper than on screen. Our exports are RGB PDFs, which nearly every print shop accepts and converts. We do not claim to produce true CMYK separations, because we do not, and telling you otherwise would just make the surprise arrive later.
Photos that print soft
A photograph needs roughly 250 of its own pixels per printed inch to look crisp. Below about 150 it visibly softens. A picture sent over a messaging app has usually been compressed to well under that, so ask for the original file rather than the forwarded copy.
The editor calculates this for every image you place, at the size you placed it, and tells you before you download rather than after you print.