BEHIND THE SCENE : Printing stickers at home | CANON Pixma Pro 100-S

Hey folks ! Hope you are doing well on this Saturday. Personally, I made some cappuccino, (which now must be cold AF because of the time I've spent thinking of a title for this post...) and I am ready to tackle this article. Today, I wanted to talk a bit more about the way I'm making my stickers. Knowing that, I've just bought a printer, which allows me to control every part of the process.

It's going to be a bit of a long article, splited in two parts, because I also want to talk about my cutting method with the Cricut Explore Air 2. I also want to say that what you're going to read here is just my personal experience. I am not an expert, I just do my best as an illustrator who wants to print her stuff and I may be wrong on a lot of things. Anyway... Let's begin !

 + WHICH PRINTER TO CHOOSE ? 

I've been thinking about buying a printer for few months now. I really wanted to be able to print whatever and whenever I want, in the quantity that I need. Thought, my needs are not very big, I mostly want to print stickers and illustrations on quality paper. Oh ! I also wanted to be able to print A3. 

I literally know nothing about printing. Man, I was so lost ! But I did some investigations, watched a lot of tests. I was hesitating between an Epson SureColor SC-P600 and a Canon Pixma Pro 10-S. Around 650€ each. Quite a budget I must say.

And I realized that the Canon Pixma Pro 100-S, from the same series, was also a good option considering my needs. So I ordered this one. Again not an expert. At all. But for now this one seems to work perfectly fine, the quality is amazing (and it was a lot cheaper, shhh).

 + HOW I PREPARE MY FILE ? 

Before anything, you need to make sure that your file is ready to be printed. I will use Photoshop here but I guess it's pretty much the same everywhere. Mine is in french by the way, sorry about that, if you have any question, feel free to ask.

So today I am working on a new stickers sheet. I always paint in RGB, it's easier for me but sometimes, it can be tricky because I may work with colors that are not printable. You need to be careful with that. 

Here is my final file, I want my stickers sheet to look like this in the end. It's a 105 x 200 mm, 300 dpi, RGB file. The grey line is just here for you to see how wide is the white outline, it will not be printed. For the outline, I just use the stroke option around my designs, in Photoshop.

And my printing file, where I put two sheets to be more effective. The black circles are here to help me cut (it's a bit of a ratchet method, but it works, I will explain this tomorrow). This final file is 210 x 297 mm, 300 dpi, CMYK profile.

About the ICC profiles. I admit it's something very obscur for me but one thing I know is that you must adapt the profile to the printer AND to the paper. If you don't have any pre-made profile that suits your need, you can ask a professional to make one according to your printer and the paper you want to use. It can be a bit pricey but it will always be cheaper than doing it yourself buying a device to calibrate your printer.

 + CONCERNING PAPER. 

For those stickers I use white glossy sticky paper that I got from OnlineLabels UK at uk.onlinelabels.com. Their paper is thinner than the one that I had before, this is exactly what I was looking for, and the quality is really good ! I am looking forward to test more of their papers.

 + PRINTING. 

Now that everything is settled, I can print. Again, this is the way I print my stickers, but maybe it's not working the same for everything. Few important steps here :

1. Make sure my file has the right ICC profile.
2. Let Photoshop manages colors (in that case, be sure to disable the color management in your printer set up)
3. I select a profile for my printer.
4. I use "relative colorimetric" with Black point compensation. Just because it works better with what I want to print. You can simulate this in View > Proof Setup > Custom...
5. Then I go in my printing set up to make sure that I checked the good type of paper and printing quality. Here " Glossy paper" and "High". 
6. Of course, I don't forget to center the image and make sure the size is the right one.

And that's it ! Here I print a whole page, but usually, I print tiny tests before anything, just to be sure that the colors are correct and not spoil an entire sheet of paper. My assistant is often here to help me with the printing process. What a curious cat !

Here is the final result of my donuts print. 

Tomorrow, I'll post the next article which speaks about the cutting method. If you have any question, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer. And if you have advices on things I am doing wrong, please, feel also free to tell.

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