Best print on demand for my Inktober drawings?

November 8, 2022 7:43 AM

Like many others, I drew a picture (on paper) every day in October for Inktober. I’d like to put them on a print on demand site for various friends who are interested. But I feel a bit overwhelmed by the process of getting them off the page and onto the site.

1) Can anyone recommend a good, affordable site that does prints on demand on various substrates? Bonus for t-shirt, mug, photo book options. I do not want to be involved in the fulfillment/mailing side of things or spend an hour per drawing getting things set up.

2) Can someone explain the easiest, lowest-friction way I can get drawings and paintings (ink, marker, and watercolor, generally no larger than A5/5.25x8.25”, some black and white, some full color) onto the site in a way that looks decent? I have an iPhone and iPad and an all-in-one network printer/scanner (that I hate using) plus a laptop. I also have all my pics on Instagram. I would love to avoid having to do a lot of post-editing work on these like manual background cleanup, if possible.

I keep getting stalled and overwhelmed on figuring this out, and I’m sure it’s not that hard. Help! Thank you in advance!

posted by music for skeletons to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I can only offer suggestions on 2.

If you want them to look good when printed, and you want the people who buy them to feel like they got something that was worth paying for and also a good representation of the original work, the only way is to put in the work on all 31 drawings and make sure they're up to that standard. What you have on instagram is useless for printing. You could shoot pictures of everything with your phone, but you need to make sure they'll well- and evenly-lit. The phone's flash aimed directly at the artwork is most likely not going to give good results. And ideally you'd use some kind of tripod to minimize camera shake and to make sure that you're shooting everything straight on.

The scanner is most likely the best solution as it takes care of the lighting and making sure everything is straight. Generally, you'll want to scan at 300 DPI (or higher) at whatever size the thing will be printed. If you're drawing is 3" x 3" and you want it printed at 6" x 6", you need to scan at a higher resolution so that it still looks sharp when blown up. But check with whatever printing service you use to make sure you're submitting stuff in the right format (they might want color files in CMYK rather than RGB, and they might want the black and white stuff in greyscale).
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:08 AM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I have some antique art that I had scanned at a professional printer (big, and I thought I might want very high quality scans). It was slightly expensive iirc but zero hassle and the results were amaaaazing.
posted by clew at 8:48 AM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: There are a variety of sites available, so take this one suggestion from my experience with that grain of salt: Society6 will let you upload images to be printed on demand. The process there is relatively straightforward both to create and order once you have a high quality scan file to upload. Each type of item you can sell (from paper prints to duvet covers) will tell you if your scan is high enough quality for you to sell that type of item, and you can select which ones you want to have on your shop. For each item, there is a base cost and you set the markup. You end up with a link you can direct people to that they can select their items to order, and in theory you will receive the commission at a certain point (I set my prices to minimum because I just ordered a couple of things for myself so have not generated any revenue).

My experiences:
- I haven't printed any art as a fine art print so I can't speak to that print quality. The sticker I bought was clear and cut out cleanly.
- The one tshirt that I've printed through there with a simple logo seemed fine. Not amazing as compared to a run of discharge printed tshirts, but fine for a one-off.
posted by past unusual at 10:20 AM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Re: scanning, Kinko’s or Staples can do this. Decide what resolution you want (minimum 300 dpi) and the format (jpeg, tiff, pdf) that the upload site prefers. Bring a USB stick.

Even if the drawing is b/w, scan it in full color for a rich black.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 12:37 PM on November 8, 2022 [1 favorite]