As holiday card season is approaching, here are some tips for making sure your art is usable by the printer.

Tips for Submitting:
When submitting art for card production, please make sure the art files are zipped or stuffed.
If the compressed file is still large (greater than 10MB), there may be some images in the files that require re-sizing. The resolution should still be 300 dpi, but the images in the art files should be sized to the appropriate dimensions, prior to being embedded in the card art.
For example, images used originally for banners and posters can be used for the card art, but the images need to be scaled down to the size needed for the card art file. Using the original files with images with the resolution for the banner simply shrunk down will yield very large files - some of which will not be usable by the card manufacturer.

Tips for re-sizing:
1. Open the image in photoshop and make the image size and resolution smaller and more proportionate to the size of the plastic card.
2. Make the resolution of the photoshop image 300 dpi and then make the width and height around 5 inches on either the width or height and then allow photoshop to make the other variable be proportionate to the other and save that image.
3. Place the re-sized image file into illustrator and then embed it. Also, please make sure your art contains the final versions of the language on the back of the card. Any time the printer needs to make an adjustment, there is a charge.