How to turn a playing card into a print?

June 12, 2015 2:30 PM

I want to put framed print versions of various playing cards on my walls - a few from the 1960's era Mille Bornes game, some from a deck of WWII aircraft identification cards. How best to achieve this? I obviously don't want to lose much detail in the creation process. Are there particular scanners, printers, and paper best suited to the task? Perhaps something a professional photographer would use?
posted by schoolgirl report to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

If you are going to blow up the card, you might consider scanning in the card and try to convert it to a vector illustration ("vectorize"). There are a number of software packages you can use to do this.

Vectorizing will likely give you a smaller file to print, and it will be easier to blow up without losing detail or looking increasingly pixelated.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2015

Response by poster: Yes, sorry, I should have said that I do indeed want to blow them up some.
posted by schoolgirl report at 2:42 PM on June 12, 2015

Any scanner would do fine. You just need to scan at high resolution.
posted by w0mbat at 2:43 PM on June 12, 2015

Yes, you need to scan them in at as high a resolution as possible. 300 dpi is standard for print, but obviously if you can get it higher you will keep more detail when you enlarge them. You want to be sure your final image is still 300 dpi for printing. If you can turn it into a vector, that would be ideal, but it's likely to involve a lot of playing around with the software not to lose detail that way (I've tried it) and it works much, much better with flat colours than, say, watercolours.

As for printers, I've been told that laser printers are "crisper" and more exact than inkjet, but inkjet has slightly more vivid colours. YMMV.

Paper is really a personal taste thing. For playing cards, something in a matte or satin finish probably, and I wouldn't go below 150gsm in weight but thats just me.
posted by stillnocturnal at 3:31 PM on June 12, 2015

Best answer: If the cards are 3x2 and you scan them at 1200dpi, you can print them at 18x12 at 200dpi without doing any resizing. If they are printed using a halftone, it's going to show but there won't be any pixelation or resizing artifacts. I wouldn't advise trying to vectorize them, cleaning up the vectorized output can be more time consuming than just redrawing it by hand.

For printing, use a good ink jet printer on quality paper (I'd go with some kind of matte paper for flat color graphics). Do not use a laser printer, the colors won't be as vibrant and you have to use crappy paper.
posted by doctor_negative at 3:49 PM on June 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

How big do you want the final product? I used to work at a print shop and we did stuff like this. Scan at the highest resolution we could, do a little bit of correction and levels work but not much, and print on a large format Epson. The halftone in the picture looked pretty ok blown up, to be honest.

Unless you want to get a scanner and do the scans yourself I'd probably just find an indie print/design/copy place and have them do it, especially if you want large format prints and not just 8x10s etc from a standard inkjet printer. And BTW, color laser printers are ok for quick stuff and proofing but for anything you'd want to frame or put on the wall a professional inkjet machine is FAR better.
posted by tremspeed at 12:09 AM on June 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Paying somebody else for the use of their large-format professional inkjet may well end up costing you less than the ink required to cover a whole page in full color using a typical domestic printer. A professional printer will most likely use a pigment-based ink as well rather than the dye-based ink you'll usually find in a home printer; dye-based inks are rather more prone to fading when continually exposed to light.
posted by flabdablet at 4:44 AM on June 13, 2015 [1 favorite]