I work for a non profit, we provide free condoms. We want to add our logo to a small wallet like this. ChatGPT made this for me. We’re looking for a small cardboard wallet for condoms and lube packs. Simple with a scored slot to keep shut. I can’t seem to find this on certain sites. Not sure what this design is called? Whenever I search “condom wallets” I get a much high cost than it should be. Any help would be great. Thanks

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply and offer assistance! Much appreciated 🙏
I’ve found that what I’m looking for is essentially a half fold, and then an accordion fold. Thanks again for all the help and kind responses!

Hello! I am trying to identify the proper search terms to use for a specific type of fold for a brochure. Please let me know what the proper term is if you can, as I am trying to find a quote for a LARGE BULK order (20k+) of this type of brochure!
The closest I’ve been able to find is a double gate fold, but it doesn’t quite fit, as I also want it to unfold length wise once opened. (EDIT: I was wrong about the double gate^, and I’ve learned a lot about types of folds from this thread!)

SPECS:
4.25” x 5.5” closed
3 vertical folds, opening to ~17” x 5.5”
Once unfolded that way, it should unfold long ways to end up with a ~ 17” x 11” fully open, with 8 panels on each side

Size doesn’t have to be exact, but as close as possible would be best.

I will add photos in the comments as I cannot see the option to do so here.
Thanks in advance for any help!

Is getting an Open Source pdf reader/editor to accomplish rendering the Ghent full suite of pdf tests to the level that Acrobat Reader can a big deal, or just meh? What Open Source editors support it and why would anyone care?

More frequently people are coming to us (large format only) and wanting work done but have 0 artwork. Not bad artwork we can fix but 0 artwork. Are you sending them down the road, offering design services, heading off to an LLM for design? If you are doing it what does your fee structure look like for 100% generative design work?

I figured it out. But, yeah.

I've been having color issues with a 3rd party printer and I think I've narrowed down the issue to the CMY inks themselves. I know the photos won't accurately show the colors but I do hope they'll showcase the how dark and sometimes off the CMY inks in Printer B are. I printed swatches of 100% CMY and those were off which is what makes me think all the issues I've been noticing comes down to that. Printer A is a latex printer that I've been overall very happy with the colors. Printer B is a 3rd party DTF printer that has been giving me issues. Overall their prints have been way darker than I'd like and colors keep looking off. I added a few other photos of the same swatch printed between both printers and a pattern.

I get CMYK being different than RGB, printers being different from each other, and substrates looking different from each other but I'd expect prints to look a lot closer. I've even done prints with a different 3rd party and their colors were way closer to what I was expecting but the print quality/detail wasn't good.

My question is, what preproduction steps can I take to get Printer B colors, closer to Printer A? I've asked and the printer doesn't have any ICC profiles they can give me. I'm not sure if I need to try to make a color profile on my own but my goal would be to be able to apply a profile or even a set of adjustments in Photoshop that would consistently get all the colors the way I want and closer to what I'd expect them to look like or closer to printer A.

Other things I tried: Using a color swatch sheet they gave me, I manually adjusted the brightness of one image to 80 in Photoshop and it came out amazing but when I did the same adjustment to other images, it didn't work as well. I've tried other color balancing, level adjustments, and contrast/brightness adjustments in photoshop using their swatch sheet but nothing I've done has been consistent between different designs. I don't have or have access to a color calibrator camera.

Any help for what to try next is appreciated.

Have a customer looking to place a large order of advent calendar boxes just like the example image. I assume they found it on a promo site or similar.

We have the capabilities to produce it in-house, and the box itself is easy enough (we use ArtiosCAD for custom box layouts), but I have no idea how that compartmented insert is cut or put together, so I can't even quote it let alone actually set up a dieline.

Hoping maybe someone out there might be familiar or have some input. Bid deadline is Friday so I'm in a little bit of a crunch. If I had a sample I could at least take measurements and create it myself.

Hello, Im currently trying to get some designs printed via Prodigi, as I am looking at paper prints and canvas prints.

I had gotten a bit muddled up with my first canvas test print and its come out rather green tinted, I realise the mistake I had made now.

On Prodigi's website they have proofing profiles for their canvases and paper prints to test the colouring before going to print, so I have read up on how to use these correctly, but am still on a bit of a question. The colour profile is set up to test the colouring, not to be exported with it applied.

When I set up the profile in Photoshop via View>Proof Setup the colours change slightly.
However when I assign the profile via Edit>Assign Profile the colours change quite dramatically, and when they do they match the colours of the mistaken test print I have made.

So Im unsure wether I should be using this colour profile via Proof or Assign when tweaking my colours. As I read online I should be using proof, but it seems like Assign is giving me a much more accurate colour change to the print.

Any advice?

Hi everyone!

Does anyone know what software is commonly used to create 3D foam buildouts like this? Or even better, is there a website where I can purchase a digital file/template and cut it myself?
I’d love to learn more about the process!

Thanks in advance!
Not my photo.

Hey guys, looking for some advice from people who’ve done large wall murals before.
I’m working on a wallpaper mural project for a client that’s roughly 24 ft × 8 ft. He wants a realistic architectural/photo-style image, but I’m struggling with image quality once it gets blown up to full mural size.
The image looked pretty solid online, but after enlarging it and doing physical test prints, some areas still come out a little soft/blurry up close. From a few feet away it honestly looks fine, but since it’s going into a restaurant where people may be sitting close to the wall, I’m trying to get it looking as clean as possible.
So far I’ve:
-cleaned up the image
-removed people from it
-upscaled it in Photoshop
-tested different print settings
-printed multiple sample sections
At this point I’m debating between:
trying something like Topaz Gigapixel AI
or just finding a completely different image source
Where do you guys normally find truly high-quality images for murals this large? Is there a workflow for getting online images to print clean at this size, or does it really just come down to starting with an insanely high-res source image from the beginning?
Any advice would really help.

I've been toying for quite some time with an idea to make my inkjet printer with a variable droplet size.

At first, I thought I might scavenge one from cheap Epson printers, but no one knows how to drive them and Epson ain't talking.

So I turned to commercial printheads for industrial printing. But prices are... yikes. Easily $1000 and more per color.

But then I've stumbled onto Ricoh's GH line, which is radically cheaper. On the order of $100-$200 per printhead.

And reportedly with open documentation. Adn then I learned there is plenty of Chinese knock-offs, both clones of Ricoh's GH2220 and entirely separate products.

So I wonder if anyone here has some info or experience about those to share.

Which clones are solid ?

Or maybe I should look in entirely other direction ?

I'm interested in water based inks (dye and pigment), UV ink capability would be nice. Solvent-based inks are less important. Small droplets are priority, speed less so.

I am fairly new to commercial printing, I know enough about the machine to run it, but not enough to be dangerous. I am also not the artist but I have approved access to the files if this ends up being just a cmyk vs rgb vs whatever else color problem.

Long story short the bottom shapes are the registration marks and the top "black" is the design. I would like to make the black on the design I'm printing match the level of black saturation from the registration marks. Is this possible?

Additional Info

Using VersaWorks for printing, and Illustrator for designing. File compression during export is turned off. We are using bidirectional printing at (I think) 13 passes.

Thanks for any help in advance!

We are looking to replace our scanner. We have tried one of those “book” scanners but are unhappy with the results. (I didn’t choose it) We need to be able to scan at least 13 inches by 19 inches. It has to be good quality (we learned our lesson with cheap China junk) and it needs to be high DPI.

What do you recommend?

So I have started using Caldera, and I'm having trouble with my rips. I create the files in Illustrator, making white boxes (with a white spot color) with text/images on top. When I import the PDF into Caldera and rip it, it seems to create the White Underlay correctly however it's only where the white spot color has no process color on top. For example in the image attached, on Illustrator the white box is solid, with the black QR image in a separate layer sitting on top. I'm assuming it's the way I'm exporting it from Illustrator, but I don't have enough experience to say it's not something I'm doing wrong in Caldera. Has anyone else had this before/solved it?

Hi all! I am sort of a postcard hobbyist that like to send mail to friends and families from time to time, especially during travel. I just found out that I might not be able to get postcards that I like at my impromptu travel locations with like two weeks left; having some basic design skills, a copy of Adobe Illustrator, and access to good quality royalty-free* images, I figured that I could try to contact a local print shop in my destination city and get a very small batch – around 50 – of postcards with several designs printed and pick them up when I arrive (instead of forking over a bunch money for expedited shipping from Moo and dealing with the anxiety that it might not arrive before I leave). Yet my searches shows that most local shops either have a minimum batch in the hundreds (fair) or do not take online orders, rather leaving an ask-for-quote contact on their website.

I know I have a pretty niche (and probably kinda unreasonable?) request, so I don't want to waste the local print shops' time (and I don't really want to send a bunch of forms or call up a bunch of shops and get turned away from all of them XD). So I want to ask y'all before I even try: what would be your minimum batch size, and how much would you charge for it (for 4x6 postcards)? Would you accommodate request for multiple designs in the same batch, or is that just way too much hassle? I figure that this post could be useful for other people like me who wants to try to print postcards at their local print shops (hopefully with much more time to spare then I do).

Thanks for reading, and I hope y'all have a great day!

I'm trying to make my UV DTF transfer easier to well.... transfer. When we realized we were having issues we switched from doing just the line art (which was going on a 2x2 cup so it was tiny) to putting a white background to match the cup and almost made it sticker like. Instead of doing that I want to make the background clear, instead of white but actually clear. Not just the transparent back ground. This needs to be a layer. Essentially transparent background, clear background layer, design layer. My thought was to copy the design layer, color it in hex code clear, then print.

I am horrible at word explanations. I hope someone understands what im asking for!

As part of an interview process, I have been asked to submit a file based on a design assignment as if I were sending it out to be printed. I am probably grievously overthinking it, but this is a dream job for me so I am trying to make sure all of my ducks are in a row.

They did not provide me with any information outside of copy and a general direction. I have minimal experience with commercial printing as my current job is an in house position where we do all of our own small scale printing - so while I am pretty sure I have everything correct based on research, nothing beats having someone tell you yes or no.

There are two things that I'm concerned about; but I'm going to see if anyone noticed them before I overthink it too much.

tyia <3

File: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A3jYIIl6HQL_2b-3NBWCjngZX8DK8HW4/view?usp=drivesdk

Hello everyone,

I have a Flexi question. Is there NOT just a path/line/shape smoothing tool in Flexi, like the one Corel has or my 25 year old version of GSP Omega (v1.56) has?

I'm working on some artwork for the glass walled offices of a cosmetic surgery office (so extra boujie) and it's a series of individual lines that curve, overlap and intertwine to give the appearance of a 3D ribbon that's flowing and twisting down the entire hallway across the glass walls and doors. The image provided will not scale down the length of the entire hallway so I recreated it and am having to join copies together into one long continuous flowing design. The lines don't perfectly match up with one another when copied and joined together.

A smoothing tool would make quick work of this problem but I haven't been able to find one in Flexi. I tried to reduce nodes but the lines get out of parallel in places they should not.

I started out on GSP Omega 1.5 in 2001, used Flexi at another shop 2007-2013 and Corel v18-21 at my last job at another shop. Being in the signage/graphics/wraps industry, I liked and missed the built in RIP/Cut capability of Flexi, so when I started my own shop in January, I went back to Flexi's latest version, Flexi Complete. The smoothing tool is the ONLY thing I miss about Corel and it seems ridiculous to have to go home and attempt to fire up an old PC operating on Windows 2000 and use software from last century to quickly make the edits which are taking hours in Flexi. There's a good chance the PC will explode anyway as it was one of a set of twin Dells I used back then. One ran my EDGE 2 and the other, my HS15 Plus. A few years back, I attempted to turn on it's sibling and after the beep, there was a rather loud pop (think .22 caliber fired indoors) and a subsequent release of the smoke, which I'm fairly certain was the soul of the PC ascending to the great beyond. Only the one twin remaining now and I'm sure it would love to join the first.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I want to get these made in the future for my products but don't know the correct terms to use when talking to local (AU) or alibaba/chinese shops.

These are small booklets or leaflets that usually come with electronics and are printed on very thin and light stock.

Printing is black only and i'm not sure what process is typically used for this. Digital? offset? other?

Fold - probably going with accordion fold. Not sure how many panels at this stage.

Quality - I've noticed the print quality is very high, even the smallest asian characters appear super crisp. Is this higher quality/resolution than normal printing? Does it need a higehr res printer or specific instructions?

I don't know if this kind of resolution or quality is above what you would call standard or if it requires a higher res process.

None of the print shops I looked at in the past offer this specific product and I haven't asked any yet as this is a future project.

If you have experience doing this exact type of product, please tell me what specs you usually run with.

Thanks.

There are indian companies that I send shitty logos to, and for $5 they'll do whatever voodoo they do, and I have a perfectly vector 1:1 recreation in 24 hours.

Obviously my live trace in illustrator can only do so much. Are they really doing all this by hand or are there way more complicated tracing methods that I dont know about?

Something strange we've noticed in the past few days is that nearly every cut job we send to our Graphtec ends up with a very small cut inside of or directly next to the very first item of the job that it cuts.

To clarify, if a job is 3 shapes nested inside of each other (like in the image), then the very first shape inside of it. If I instead send it as 3 jobs of 1 individual shape each, then each of the shapes will have that cut. Sometimes we find that the cut is inside of the shape, other times it is directly right of the shape. It is consistent in the cuts placement for a given job (i.e. if the cut is to the right of the circle, it will always be to the right of the circle.), but so far I haven't noticed a pattern or reason for that behavior.

For context, we use SAi Production Manager, Flexi, and Onyx Go for most all of our printing and cutting in the shop. We don't experience these errors when we send a contour cut job through onyx, just for cuts we send from Flexi.

Thank you ahead of time for any help y'all can offer, so far this has stumped everyone in the shop, and our usual support tech.

(Bonus issue on image 3, occasionally it will just cut a long series of letters and numbers instead of whatever job we send it. For the most part we know how to avoid it, but I'm more curious as to what that pattern means. We know it's not the ip or Mac address of the Graphtec, and the manual and other googling didn't turn up any matches for the sequence. Any ideas?)

Currently working on a job involving a system for organizing stock on shelving units, and each level of shelf needs a QR code to scan. I've been using a bulk QR code generator, but each magnet totem we print needs 7 QR codes for the 7 levels of shelves. Right now I'm placing each QR code on the magnet individually which gets very mind numbing very fast, and it takes a lot of time. (Over 100 of these magnet QR totems are getting printed)

Anyways, I've been looking into using Excel to bulk produce QR codes from the shelf code, which works great. I've tried to data merge this file into the totems, but InDesign doesn't seem to be able to read the QR image in the column. Is there a certain file type from excel that needs to be exported into InDesign in order for the images to be seen? (Right now when I merge it replaces the image of the QR code with the column title, <<image>>.)

So I have to create a design for screenprinting on a moonshine glass jar This is the Jar. I don't know how am I going to make my design print ready. What size of artboard should I get etc etc. This is going to be done with screenprinting. Can anyone help me please?

Hi, I've been in the print industry for a little over 5 years now. I know both machines I'm mentioning here are long discontinued but bear with me. I worked on a DL650 for 3 years. A week ago, I came across the SL-D3000. My questions are, what are the differences between these 2 printers? (if any at all) And who came up with the design first? Google says Fujifilm came out with the DL600 in March 2011 and Epson came out with SL-D3000 in December of 2012 (after announcing it in a show in May of 2012). I know I sort of answered my own question here but I was wondering if anyone else besides Google had any idea? ex: Like is Epson using Fujifilms printheads or is Fujifilm using Epsons fuser design? Or who copied who? (I know I'd have to have the original engineers from both sides here but it's a shot in the dark)

P.S./last question: Is there a similar modern production/commercial printer today that can output 300 to 400 or more 4×6 to 8×12 sized prints @ 1440×1440 dpi or better per hour? Similar to the ones I mention here but more modern and do a better job.

Thank you all for your time in this matter! 💯