I need some help with printing these UGC covers (did it wrong at Office Max)

Artist's Corner > Universal Game Case Covers

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Arseen:
Inkjet is better than laser usually on images.
If the paper is thin enough. Normal paper is thick enough. Or if it's not they have used too think one, don't accept the prints.

difference in old and new UGCs is small, just try and if the cover doesn't fit right trim minimally until perfect.

AxelSteelBMX:

--- Quote from: cojack16 on November 09, 2013, 04:30:53 PM ---Axel, What do you mean by "bubbly" covers? How do you let them dry out a "certain way"?

--- End quote ---
I mean when you print something that uses a ton of ink and the paper, like, wrinkles up. A guy on another website I found describes it better: "The moist, printed part of the paper is shrinking a bit, but the dry part is not. The strain at the intersection causes some buckling."

To avoid this from causing damage to the print to the point where I can't use it, I remove it from the printer immediately and hold the paper by its opposite ends horizontally in front of a rotary fan, the back side of the paper facing the fan and the fan on high. I give the paper enough slack so that it billows towards me like a sail. This is usually strong enough to blow against the "bubbled" portions of the image and flatten them out while drying, but in some cases I have to flatten the bubbly portions by hand before it's done drying. It's a very "hands-on" sort of process, but it's the only process I have. I don't know if I described this well enough. *shrug*

cojack16:
Okay so I appreciate everyone's advice since it's helped me get a better understanding of what I need and have to do.

That said, I ran into a snag at Office Depot. On my first attempt, as I said earlier, we used matte legal paper and the image turned out to be too big. After cutting it out, it was far too large to fit in my UGC. I assume this happened because it was printed with fit to paper on (scale to media?).

When I went back tonight, I mentioned this to the guy and he made some changes. We made sure the orientation is landscape. I checked to make sure the horizontal/vertical resolution of the image is 300dpi. I believe it was centered both horizontally and vertically. I wasn't sure about how to have borders being set to minimum though.

What happened was this (see below).

This is what the print-out looked like after the white around it was trimmed out (It was not trimmed too much, that is what it was printed out like). As you can see, it looks like the image is cropped too much, especially at the top and bottom. I don't know what the specific problem is and maybe someone can help me figure that out? What were we doing wrong tonight?

Arseen:
Looks like the image was cropped before printing?

AxelSteelBMX:
That looks like an issue with the printing borders, but the size seems closer to what it's supposed to be. If they can't figure out how to make the borders an absolute minimum (should be a sliver of white on the top and bottom, if at all), then you might need to have them do it on Tabloid-size paper (11" x 17") just to ensure you get the whole image.

Out of curiosity, how does that fit in a UGC? Mind giving us another picture of it in a UGC?

EDIT: I don't see a reason that this shouldn't work, so it seems like a problem on OfficeMax's end. Even with the borders set to ~1/4", there should be enough paper space to print the full cover. I don't get it.

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