FAQ for how to design greeting cards

No. Our cards are printed greeting cards that you customize with your own personal message and/or photo. Using our easy online design center, you design your own custom greeting card. Your personalized photo greeting cards are then professionally printed on our digital presses and shipped directly to you.

Yes. Our design center uses Flash. In order to create a greeting card, you must choose to install the Flash Player. You may see an alert window that reports the Flash Player is required. Click install to install the player from the Adobe website. (The Flash Player is a very common requirement for many web sites and is a safe install. It comes directly from Adobe itself.)

You are most likely using a Netscape browser and do not have the Flash plugin installed. In order to design a greeting card, you will need to download the plugin. When you click the link to download, you should see a pop-up window with instructions for installing the Flash Player from the Adobe website. (The Flash Player is a very common requirement for many web sites and is a safe install. It comes directly from Adobe itself.)

There are three choices for folded greeting cards:

• Small (4.25"x5.5")
• Medium (5.18"x6.7")
• Huge (8.5"x11")

White envelopes are included.

You can get an instant print quote for the exact number of greeting cards you need. We do not require you to buy cards in pre-determined sets. Prices breaks begin at 11 cards (of the same size).

Once you submit an order, cards are shipped the next business day. Shipping costs vary because the shipping cost is calculated based on the exact number of cards ordered and the method of shipment (we offer USPS, UPS, FedEx). Shipping costs are shown during the order process. You will be able to view all costs before finalizing your order.

We have found that the best way to get a true representation of our site and to sample the print quality is to design and order a single card using your choice of image. A single card order is a nominal $2.00.

We also highly recommend you order a single $2.00 card if you are concerned about the quality of your image, or if you are sending a large order and would like to view a printed proof first.

It is important to realize that all monitors display color differently. (It's the same principle as going to your local Best Buy/Circuit City/Fry's and viewing the same show on different tv screens - the color will not be exactly the same on any of the screens.) Thus, you should not expect the image to print as it looks on screen, but rather as it is defined by the color values.

If you are concerned about image quality or color, we highly recommend ordering a single $2.00 card first as a means of proofing before placing your order. We do not correct or adjust your image in any way. Our digital press is calibrated to produce the color values defined in your file - you should not expect it to match your personal printer.

Yes you can. You may add an image and text to a pre-defined area on the top portion of the card. There is a small section on the bottom that is reserved for our logo and a barcode used for internal tracking.

Your cards are printed on an 4-color HP Indigo digital offset press on a heavy card stock that's coated on the outside and matte on the inside.

Digital offset printing offers the quality of traditional printing without the wait. Your files go directly to press, bypassing the traditional time-consuming steps of film separations, film stripping and plate burning. We're sure you'll be very pleased with the resulting cards. They look and feel just like store-bought cards.

To edit text, highlight/select the text first. You can then choose a font, font size and color. The text tools allow you to use different fonts, sizes and colors as desired. Images can be edited by clicking on the image and entering the desired resizing percentage in the resize box, or clicking one of the buttons in the image tools to center image, fit image to page, etc.

You can upload one image for each side of the folded greeting card. While you cannot upload two or more images for any one side, you could layout any number of images in your preferred photo editing software and save as a single .jpg file. (To fill the card front in the proper ratio, make sure your page size follows our photo guidelines for the card size you desire.)

Yes. You can include a single image on every side of the card. Once you are in the design center, simply select the "add an image" button from the image tools on the left side of the screen.

When you start the design process and upload an image for the card front, the system recognizes whether your image is portrait or landscape. When you upload the image, the design center orientation will match the orientation of the image. The system cannot rotate images or text, so you need to upload a portrait image to design a vertical card or a landscape image to design a horizontal card.

If you decide to replace your image with another image that is a different orientation, the orientation of the card itself will not change. For example, if you start out with a horizontal image, the card will be horizontal. If you then click the "replace image" button and choose a vertical image, the card itself will still be horizontal and you'll see your vertical image scaled down to fit on the horizontal card. To change the orientation of the card itself, you must start over.

It sounds like you might not have noticed that you exceeded the size of the printable message area. You should reject your proof and go back and reduce the size of the text.

Border options are currently only available for the front of the card. One suggestion if you want a border on an inside image is to create a border around your image in your preferred photo editing application and upload a .jpg for the inside that already includes a border.

The photographs on our site are copyrighted and are for use in our online design center only.
You may NOT download, copy or reproduce any image for any purpose.

The cartoons and caricatures in our libraries were created by Poul Carlsen of Drawshop and are copyrighted by him. For usage/rights info, visit www.drawshop.com. Poul also offers custom drawing services if you'd like to order a personalized image.

In order to ensure the fastest possible turnaround, your cards are routed to the press as soon as you submit your order. Because your order is processed immediately, we cannot honor requests for changes or cancellations.

Please make sure you proof your card carefully during the proof stage. The proof you are shown on the proof page will show you exactly how the card will print. If text or images are not displayed as you intended, you should click the 'modify design' button to go back to the design center and make appropriate changes BEFORE submitting your order.

Yes. Our design center should support all current, popular browsers, including Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Camino, Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera. We welcome comments if you experience any difficulties with our greeting card design center - simply email us with the specifics of your OS, browser version, and a detailed explanation of the problem.

Our system is an online design center that is set up to allow you to upload a digital file (a scanned photo, digital camera file, etc.). We don't offer scanning services.