"ArtsCow card Printing" Topic

This looks like an really good resource for printing custom card sets. Especially useful for Piquet and TFL card driven games.

Problem is, everytime I have attempted to create a set and upload some images for use in the cards I get a warning message.

Something along the lines of increase the resolution of the image or risk a poor print. 300dpi is recommended. Most images on the net are much less than that.

Has anyone taken the risk and ordered a card set , despite the warnings of poor image quality ? How did they turn out?

Any other advice or tips?

I've made quite a few decks of cards myself; all have been printed by ArtsCow and I've been very happy with the results.

Here's an article I wrote about designing cards which you might find useful (though I don't recall ever having any issue with warnings about resolution): link

Hugh

Thanks Hugh,

Excellent reference. Where did you get your images by the way?

Finding the images is the difficult bit , in my experience.

I have never heard of this place. I will check when I get home.

Thanks for the post.

Matthew

I've had several custom decks spread out over two years on multiple orders.

I've found that the quality will vary by order. I have some that are as good as regular playing cards – and these cards see a lot of handling. Then I had a deck that I shuffled twice and the backs were peeling off of them.

Overall they are not as good as "regular" playing cards for looks and durability but they are customized to whatever you wanted including front and back.

If you do order, wait for a coupon. They have some decent discounts that pop up every few weeks.

FirstBrigade, most of the images I've used in my cards have been collected from the Internet. Searching for these has been by far the most time-consuming part of creating a new deck. Some of the pictures have required very imaginative search terms and a good deal of patience to find!

The only exception I can remember is the Rules With No Name fate cards, where I used photos of my own miniatures, suitably edited to remove the background. That is also a time-consuming process, of course.

I tried uploading a deck to AC and it drove me crazy. Now I just make a PDF and roll on down to Staples and get it printed out for $4 USD-7 and cut them myself. And the last set of decks I ordered, the shipping was 25 freakin' dollars. Um, no.

I will say the two decks I do have have held up for over 4 years, though.