Make Your Own Greeting Cards

It’s easy to produce your own greeting cards and a very satisfying way to share your photos with family and friends. All you need is a suitable software application, an inkjet printer and the right kind of paper and inks. (We’re focusing on ‘hard copy’ cards in this feature because there’s no shortage of online templates and services for creating e-cards.)

Although a number of image editors include templates for making greeting cards, in our experience Microsoft’s Publisher (which is part of the Office suite) is the easiest to use for cards that will be printed. The applications provided with some printers and in some image editors may include greeting card templates but they seldom provide the correct orientations for cards that will be produced with standard paper sizes.

Publisher provides a wide range of sizes and orientations to choose from, and you can decide where the paper will be folded. Best of all, they are highly customisable.

Designing a Card in Publisher
Publisher makes it very easy to produce professional-looking greeting cards by providing a wide range of pre-designed templates. Blank templates are also available for more experienced designers.

Some of the greeting card size templates provided in Microsoft Publisher.

Step 1: Select the template you’d like to use and choose the photos you wish to include. You can delete any of the items on the template and replace them with your own pictures. You can also set the size of the cards and decide whether to fold the page in half or quarters.

Step 2: Working on the first page of the template, delete the existing picture and replace it with your own photo. You can also change the colour, size and orientation of any items in the template – or items you add – using drag-and-drop controls and the toolbars along the top and side of the workspace.

If you’d like to add a coloured border to your picture, right-click on the picture and select Format Picture from the drop-down menu. The Colours and Lines section lets you determine the colour and width of the border.

Step 3: Right-click on the text box and select Change Text. This allows you to select a font and adjust its size and colour. Key in your replacement text.

Add any additional graphics and embellishments to complete the front page of the card.

Step 4: Click on the box at the bottom left side of the workspace (shown with an arrow) and move on to design the middle pages of your card. The procedure is the same as for the front page. Replace the illustrations and text in the template with your own pictures and words and then move on to the back page by clicking on page 4.

Step 5: One of the nice features of Publisher’s templates is the way they let you personalise the design. The program will automatically insert your name in the text box. You can change the picture, re-orientate picture and/or text and adjust colours and sizes to suit your wishes. The finished result is ready for printing.

Working with Editing Software
Editing software applications that provide templates for designing cards usually stop with the first page of the card. However, they can allow you to create a more professional-looking image, which can be copied and imported into a Publisher template.

The illustrations below show a couple of examples of the design workflow provided in Photoshop Elements.

Media Choices
The most suitable paper for greeting cards – particularly those that are half-fold size – is double-sided matte paper. We have had considerable success with the 170 gsm Coated Matte 2/s paper (Code: INK017) from Longbottom Digital Papers (www.longbottom.com.au), which is available in A4, A4 and A3+ sizes. The A4 size is ideal for most cards.

Single-sided paper may be used for quarter-fold cards, where the entire design is printed on only one side of the paper, but is unsuitable for half-fold cards as the inks may smear if you print on the uncoated side of the paper. Reproduction will also be inferior.

Printing a quarter-fold card created in Microsoft Publisher on A4 paper is straightforward, as the software will orientate the pages automatically. Half-fold cards can be trickier, particularly if you want smaller sizes. You can choose between printing one card per sheet or doubling up and printing two cards per sheet then cutting them later. (Most printers come with software that will enable you to print two images per page.)

If you’re printing from a software application that doesn’t layout pages automatically, you must determine the orientation of pictures and text for each page. Use a sheet of office paper to determine where to place your pictures and text. Positions for a top-fold card are shown in the illustrations below.

Your choice of ink will be dictated by your printer. It doesn’t matter whether you use dye or pigment inks as long as they have been developed specifically for the printer and offer instant drying and reasonable lightfastness. Don’t be tempted to use third-party inks; you have no guarantee of colour accuracy, longevity or handling characteristics.

Producing Postcards
Owners of Canon’s Selphy printers can take advantage of the postcard template printed on the reverse side of the 6 x 4 inches (15 x 10 cm) paper they use. These printers will produce borderless prints from digital images in connected cameras or on memory cards (which are inserted into the card slot).

The process is so simply a child can create professional-looking results. Some models let you add clip art and text boxes with standard greetings in them. Although the results may not be quite as sophisticated as cards created with other applications, they’re easy to make and look better than some cards you purchase in souvenir outlets.

If you prefer designing your own cards, you can also connect most Selphy printers to a computer and use a software application like Publisher to design postcards with multiple images and user-generated text.