Learn About the Best Inkjet Printers for Greeting Cards
What Inkjet Printers are best for greeting card printing?
With so many inkjet printers available, your choices for a good greeting card printer are better than ever. But, for the serious amateur or pro photographer with print production in mind, the field of good printers narrows considerably. From our experience, a number of key factors come together to make a reliable, high quality greeting card printer. Most manufacturers have at least one printer that fits the bill. The printers in this article have been selected based on hours of printing experience in the Red River Paper print labs.
Below are the top inkjet printers Red River recommends for greeting card printing.
Street Price: $89
A note about Canon printers - Many of the current Canon printer models use the same basic inkjet printing technology (print heads and inks). The CLI-226 ink system is what you will find in most iP, MG, MP, and iX printer models.
If you find a Canon printer that has extra features you need, check if it is a cousin of the iP4920. It will have five ink tanks (two blacks) and use CLI-226 ink. If so, that printer will also work well as a greeting card machine.
Street Price: $149
The Artisan 50 replaces the R280 and is basically the same printer. This printer uses six individual tanks featuring Claria dye ink. Speed is has been improved over previous models. The Artisan 50's feed system seems better able to handle card stocks - a big plus. We like dye inks because they outstanding color and compatibility with basically any inkjet card stock you can find. The Epson Artisan 50 is compatible with all Red River greeting card stocks.
Street Price: $499
Great color reproduction, robust paper transport mechanism, and compatibility with all Red River inkjet papers make these printers good for greeting card production. An excellent choice if you want to expand into larger print sizes.
Why not include an HP in the list?
HP makes a fine inkjet printer. The problem that we consistently see regards the HP paper feed system. These printers do not feed thick Red River card stocks on a consistent basis. In addition, we have reports that making and using custom paper sizes in the HP print driver can be inconsistent. Getting it right on the first or second try is a challenge. If you have an HP and have successfully printed on Red River pre-scored greeting cards, we would love to hear from you via our Support Center.
Summary
If you want to make great looking greeting cards, and lots of them, you need a printer that will handle the work and make you look good. Fortunately, inkjet technology is amazing and offers many choices for the professional and serious amateur. Remember to think quality, speed and paper compatibility when choosing a printer. Most often, these printers will use dye ink based. If you want your greeting cards to last many years (15 and above) you most definitely should consider a pigment inkjet printer from Canon or Epson.
A big question we often answer is "How much will it cost to print my cards?". After extensive printing and calculations on ink usage, Red River Paper produced a Cost Per Card Chart. We looked at the average size of a greeting card image and made assumptions for ink usage including ink for text printing. The chart has proved to be a good reference point for customers.
Printing inkjet greeting cards is a big part of what makes inkjet printers especially useful to professional photographers. Red River Paper feels that pros should at the minimum, print thank you cards for clients. Adding custom cards to your packages adds not only profit, but mini marketing pieces with your logo on the back!
Shop for Inkjet Printable Note Card Papers
Learn About the Cost to Print Your Own Cards
Last updated: February 26, 2021
Safety Area: Due to slight variations in card cutting and print shifting a safety area of 1/8" inside the card is required to ensure that all important information (text, logo and images) are not cut off at the edge of a card.
Bleed: When artwork (picture or design) have to be printed up to the edge of a card a bleed of 1/8" is needed to insure that the edges look right. A bleed means that the image or design extends out beyond the card edge.
Artwork:
We accept artwork in the following formats: PDF (Adobe Acrobat), AI (Adobe Illustrator), PSD (Adobe Photo Shop), INDD (Adobe In Design) and Quark Express. Other formats will be accepted if the artwork is prepared correctly: JPG, TIFF, GIF and BMP.
PDF files:
Fonts must be outlined, images must be embedded and at least 300 dpi. When the back of a card is printed in one color the best results are achieved when all the text is created as vector art. Do not mix CMYK and Pantone colors, if you must each Pantone color is considered an additional color and will add to the cost of the printing. Please call for details and pricing.
Adobe Illustrator:
Outline all fonts, embed all images verify that all images are at least 300 dpi. Save in EPS format CS3 or less. Create an image file (JPG), for proofing. Zip all files for Emailing or uploading to our server.
Adobe Photo Shop:
Rasterize all fonts, submit with all layers (do not flatten image), 300 dpi minimum. If the back is one color and must be created in Photo Shop leave a duplicate layer of the text un-rasterized and send the font file with the artwork. If you don't know how to do that send the font name, if we have it we will convert the artwork to vector format, if not we will use a similar font or print as an image.
Adobe In Design:
Same as Illustrator.
Quark Express:
For best results create EPS or PDF files. If you are submitting Quark files please "Collect for Output" and include all font and image files. Do not use style command (bold, italic etc.), use the exact fonts.
Barcodes:
We can print any type of barcode, anywhere, within the safety area, on the card or key tag. To find out what type of barcode you need please download our BARCODE TEST SHEET. Print without resizing and try the different barcode types with your system.
Note on Colors.
Colors on plastic will vary due to differences in the plastics. A slight shift in colors can happen on reprints of the same project in a later time.We do our best to match previous prints but do not guaranty the same results. Exact colors are possible when using Pantone colors on solid or gradient areas of design. We do not recommend mixing full color (CMYK) with Pantone colors due to excess ink costs.
Sending Us Your Artwork: Put all your files in a folder and Zip it (or use ant other archiving system). Artwork under 10 meg can be sent via Email, if your artwork file is bigger or you do not want to send it by Email send us a request via the contact page and we will send you instructions.
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