print business card

[Wrenchman]

Hi there, I'm new to Gimp and to this forum, I've been doing Gimp for about a month now and although I didn't understand it in the beginning it's really quite user friendly, BTW. I use 2.8 

anyway I ran into a problem making mine own homemade business-cards, and that is that the front and the back do not perfectly overlap when printed.

I'm trying to push everything a little bit by chance and then hoping for the best, using a lot of draft paper, but it's still off by about 2 mm on the print.

I see one solution would be to make a larger bleeding area, as of now I have zero bleeding area, but I would rather like to understand how to make a perfect overlap.

more specifically: Horizontally the overlap seems perfect; Vertically it's off by 2 mm 

also I discovered that when you print the front and then turn the paper around and put it back in the printer everything turns opposite so that what was printed on the left side of the paper is now printed on the right side.

Thanks,



Wrenchman

[rich2005]

welcome to gimp-forum.net

Are you using pre-cut sheets (eventually after your trial prints ) If you are then there should be a template provided with dimensions.

You want to be printing at 300 ppi - There is an A4 standard template already in Gimp. Converting to metric can be a nuisance 300 ppi = 11.811 pix per mm

What you could try is set the template on a transparent layers. One layer for the front and one for the back.

Front might look like this: https://i.imgur.com/TFWAfsm.jpg

The back is just the front copied and flipped horizontally using the flip tool: https://i.imgur.com/tZnvlGv.jpg

When it comes to printing, top is still the top.

With the best will in the world, there will be a mismatch depending on how your printer takes up the paper.

Not so much a bleed area required as a safe-area about 3 mm inside the card perimeter for text and logos.

I checked the blank I use and the pre-cut sheets are symmetrical both horizontally and vertically. Have to own-up, I use Inkscape for this. Easier to create one design and clone to all the locations and it prints better.

[Wrenchman]

Thank you!

No precut, I use A4 plain paper 75 g/m2 to test and for the final product a4 240g/m2,
I have yet to find out if 240g will go through an Epson L375

I'm not sure but I made it either 300 ppi or 600 ppi, not sure how to check that afterwards?

I noticed the flip horizontally tool, that might be the solution I'm looking for,
does it matter where and or how I place the B.cards as long as I flip them?
do I choose all and then flip like the whole a4 sheet?

I have many layers, do I need flip each and every background layer individually

I just opened the gimp sheet I noticed it's 83 MB

there are 46 layers, whereas many layers have been deleted or have yet to be deleted

so since I'm new here I imagine that each and every one of the background layers should be flipped horizontally , BTW can you flip text?

Thanks, 



Wrenchman

[johna1954]

Hi Wrenchman,
I find that for the majority of printing I do 'Scribus' works very well. I use GIMP exclusively for preparing the images but find Scribus (once you get used to it) easier to use and have no problems lining up both sides. I print Business cards and also greeting cards. Happy to send you a copy of the A4 template I use if that would help.
John

[rich2005]

Scribus is good. Also Inkscape for real-word dimensions and a card as a group of objects.

(10-03-2017, 12:19 PM)Wrenchman Wrote: No precut, I use A4 plain paper 75 g/m2 to test and for the final product a4 240g/m2,
I have yet to find out if 240g will go through an Epson L375

Should be ok, I use 220 gsm in my Brother inkjet with a tight 180 deg paper feed.

Quote:I'm not sure but I made it either 300 ppi or 600 ppi, not sure how to check that afterwards?

Shown in Image menu -> Image properties.

Quote:I noticed the flip horizontally tool, that might be the solution I'm looking for,
does it matter where and or how I place the B.cards as long as I flip them?
do I choose all and then flip like the whole a4 sheet?
I have many layers, do I need flip each and every background layer individually

It depends how you have everything set up. You select the flip tool, set horizontal and click on the canvas. The active layer is flipped. If you have other layers chained to the active layer they will flip. If everything is chained the whole image flips.

Quote:I just opened the gimp sheet I noticed it's 83 MB

That is only a baby It is the size of the image in memory, the size of the xcf file on disk is smaller.

Quote:there are 46 layers, whereas many layers have been deleted or have yet to be deleted

Always better to keep rather than delete. You can hide a layer - toggle visibility on/off.

Quote:so since I'm new here I imagine that each and every one of the background layers should be flipped horizontally , BTW can you flip text?

For the back of the card, I would say no. Only the layout ( I used a grid) needs flipping. Then the complete card, as you would read it goes in the layout. You can flip text but then you need a mirror to read it

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Not 100% beginners stuff, things to look up, cropping layers (rather than the whole image), Layer groups, merging layers, new image from visible.

There is a good pdf of the Gimp manual here: http://gimp.linux.it/www/meta/

This is the way I see the set up.

   

You have a temporary transparent grid
You can create the first card, preferably in a layer group. (1)
That layer group can be duplicated and moved to a new position. (2)
Even better, the layers of the layer group can be merged, duplicated and moved as much as required (3)
Not shown but when happy with your image, a new-from-visible can create a single layer of the whole sheet.

You could have both front and back faces in the same file but might be best to keep them in separate files.

Printing: Turn the visibility of the grid off. Then some things depend on your printer. The 300 ppi image is forced to 301 ppi. Some printers will impose printing margins and A4 no longer fits. The solution is to crop the A4 image a small amount so that it fits.
EDIT: just checked and I see you are using Windows. Gimp is terrible at printing in Windows. Your best option, when finished is save as a Gimp xcf. Then Export to a png. Use some other application for printing. XnView or IrfanView, something like that.