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Printing Cards
If you really care a lot about getting the best possible printed cards, and especially colour matching, then you should probably generate your print-ready artwork outside of Cardographer, e.g. using Adobe InDesign. This is because squib, which is used by Cardographer to make cards, only supports a basic sRGB colour space, and cannot generate CMYK PDFs for example . But if you're happy with whatever comes out of squib then read on...
If you are happy to use Cardographer and Squib to generate your card print files then the main thing you are likely to be generating is a final print-ready PDF file with the fronts and backs of all the cards (Card 1 front, Card 1 back, Card 2 front, ...), one face per page.
Before starting to set up the card generation scripts (squib), etc., in Cardographer you really need to be sure of:
- what size card you want to make (noting that different printers and countries may use the same name to refer to different sizes of cards, and that metric and imperial sizes for the "same" card will also be fractionally different),
- what resolution you want to work to (squib is pixel-based, not vector; the default is 300dpi),
- what "bleed" and "safe"* sizes your printer uses (probably about 3mm bleed and 5mm safe, but can vary between printers and countries), and
- whether your cards will have the same back, one of a few different backs or all different backs (note, we haven't tried this yet).
*Note, cards are cut after they are printed, and there is some uncertainty about exactly how the print and the cut will line up. So the cards are printed a bit too big (the "bleed" is the extra round the outside of the intended card) and details are kept away from the edge (the safe distance) so that the cards will still look OK if the cut is 1-2mm off.
We have used Ivory Graphics (in the UK) a few times. They provide a range of template files for preparing cards, although you cannot use the templates directly with Squib. For example, Ivory Graphics "tarot cards" are exactly 70mm x 120mm, and they use 3mm bleeds to the final artwork and recommend 5mm safe. So the cards layouts for squib (the printable PDF page size) are actually 76mm x 126mm and all the details are in the middle 60mm x 110mm.
Note, other output options in Squib allow you to "cut" the bleed from e.g. the PNG images of the cards (for use online).
To date (December 2022) we have only taken one set of cards right through to printing from Cardographer; these are the RRI Prompts and Practice cards, see also github.
When you create a new deck in Cardographer you get an initial set of squib files (program and configuration). These will be set up for a particular card and bleed size, and output files. The typical output files are:
- a PNG image of the front of each card and (one) of each card back, used by Cardographer itself and (e.g.) in Miro;
- a PNG image "atlas" of all of the cards with the same back, with one copy of the card back, used in the Cardographer Virtual Tabletop;
- (optionally) a PDF of all of the cards with the same back, with one copy of the card back (for proofing or reading).
Including the special option even_is_back: true in "options.yml" will cause Cardographer to (re)run the card building process with a CSV file with all the cards, alternating fronts and backs, for generating a print-ready PDF.
But note that your "deck.rb" program will still need to detect this and generate appropriate output files.
You can use custom sprues to specify a PDF output layout with (e.g.) exact-size cards for commercial printing or cut-and-fold versions for test-printing on A4 paper.
See Creating a Card Deck for more on using Cardographer to generate cards in general.
Your printer may also print card boxes, e.g. tuck boxes. Cardographer won't help you to generate the artwork for these. But you should be able to use the templates provided by your printer. For example, we have used Ivory Graphics' SVG templates and created the artwork in InkScape (although, as with Squib, this is sRGB only). This include layers showing the required bleed, folds and safe areas (which you should hide before generating your final PDF for printing).