Creating Cards with Green Screen Wizard

The Card Printing service is part of Green Screen Wizard 6.0
If you have Green Screen Wizard installed and would like to do a free upgrade to 6.0click here...

In the past it has not been easy to create greeting cards on a computer. Getting the images and the text in the proper orientation can be challenging operation even for seasoned computer professionals. Submitting the final images to a card printing service can be confusing.

 

The Green Screen Wizard card publishing system simplifies all of this. A printed card is basically made up of four pieces. The front of the card is usually an image the back of the card is usually blank or it has the copyright of the person that made the card. The inside left of the card is blank the inside right has a message for the card and usually a signature.

 

The card publishing system for Green Screen Wizard simplifies this process op publishing cards in many ways. First of all it allows you to take the foreground image that you've been working on and use that as a front of the card. It has a dialog box that makes it easy to enter text for the inside of the card. Finally the Green Screen Wizard card publishing system will create the bitmaps for the printing of the cards and print them.

 

Even though Green Screen Wizard will let you print your own cards it is hard to match the quality of a professional card printing service. For this reason Green Screen Wizard has created a web card printing service. By clicking on the web card printing service button a number of things will take place. First of all, the bitmaps for the final card will be created. Next a dialog box will allow you to select how many cards you would like to publish. Finally the bitmaps will be uploaded to the web and then a web page will open to acknowledge the receipt of the files. If the files are correct then click the buy button and proceed to checkout. You will receive your cards in seven working days.

 

 

It all starts with a great image for the front of your card. For Christmas you can use the Marc Kitean Christmas collection and Christmas background collection to create a variety of holiday looks.

 

 

Click on the adjust image button on the main screen and then select the print cards tab. This will bring up the print cards dialog box.

 

 

The first thing you want to do is to fill in the text that you'd like on the inside of the card. The system will accept three lines of text but most cards only need two. You can have your name printed on the card if you like or you can leave this space blank and sign the card yourself. By default the main text is centered and is in an Arial font. The signature text is slightly to the right of center and by default a Script font.

 

 

Clicking the preview card button will create the display shown below. At first it may seem a bit confusing. Remember the system is creating a 5 x 7 card. That means that to print the card you need a 7 x 10 image. Half the image will be the front of the card the other half will be the back of the card after the 7x 10 image is folded. Once you print this 7 x 10 image you're going to want to print the text for the inside of the card. You do this by reading turning the card and then putting the card back into the printer and printing the text from the Inside of the card image. We fold the card along the center and then the text will be in the proper alignment on the inside.

 

This is shown in this sequence of photos. The card was printed on thin paper so you could get see how the images align.

 

 

 

This is what the preview dialog looks like:

 

 

On the print cards dialog box you will see a checkbox called “Add margin around the image”. By default this box is not checked and the image will occupy the entire front of the card. Because in an automated card printing service the exact edge of the card cannot be predicted an extra eighth of an inch is added to the card and is cut off. This is referred to as a full bleed image. The good news is that the card will look very professional with color right to the edge, the bad news is that you lose an eighth of an inch of your image. For the most part this is not a problem but if you feel that you have to have every bit of your image showing on the card then you can add a margin around your image and 100% of your image will be visible on the front of the card with a thin white border around it. You accomplish this by checking the add margin around image checkbox.

 

The Preview Dialog box will show the margin around the image.

 

 

With your text entered and your margin selected it is now time to publish your card. You can print your card yourself on any printer. Click the print outside button to print the front of your card. The bitmap images will be created and a printer dialog box will be presented to you. Once the outside of the card is printed take that page and turn it around and put it back into the printer. Then select the print inside button and the system will print the inside of your card. Depending on how your printer is setup you may have to invert the first page to have the text come out correctly.

 

Most computer photo printers are design to print on glossy paper. This is fine except you cannot print on the back of that paper so it is difficult to create high-quality cards. One solution is to print the outside of the card on glossy paper and then print the inside of the card on a different piece of plain paper. You then use double stick tape to tape the plain paper with the text inside of the card.

 

This cannot end up being a lot of work if you want to create a lot of cards and still the quality will not be professional. To solve this problem Green Screen Wizard has created a professional card publishing system. The way it works is that your images will be uploaded to the Internet and the professional card publisher called “CatPrint”, will retrieve them, print your cards and then mail them to you.

 

You start the process by clicking the Web publishing button. This will bring up the buy cards dialog. The only thing you need to do in this dialogue is to select the number of cards you would like printed. There is a minimum order of 25 cards, that way we simplify the billing process by making it one dollar per card. This amount includes shipping and handling costs.

 

After the cards have been uploaded to the web the following dialog box will display a webpage showing the uploaded files. It will also indicate the cost of the job and remind you that this service is only for the US and Canada. Clicking the “Add to Cart” button will place the order and you will be prompted for your credit card information

.

 

Once you have entered your Mailing address and Credit Card information the job will be created and your cards will be mailed to you in 7 days.