All Ah Um Design printables are offered in four common frame sizes and can be printed on your home printer or at your favorite local or online printer. And they can be easily scaled to print at additional sizes. All the files are hi-res, 300 dpi for the best quality prints.
You don’t need an expensive printer to get high quality prints right at home. I have an inexpensive Canon PIXMA and get gorgeous prints when I use quality papers and set my printer to the “best” setting.
Choosing Paper Type
Ah Um Designs look great on a wide variety of papers. Depending on the look you prefer, these designs work well on both glossy and matte papers. Glossy papers will make the colors look more saturated and of course you’ll have a shiny look to your print. Matte papers may be slightly less saturated but will look more like a fine art print.
I’ve been very happy with the prints I’ve gotten on Canon’s Glossy Photo Paper which is also very reasonably priced. The colors really pop and look so rich.
And I love the look of prints on Finestra Art Premium Arctic Matte Inkjet Photo Paper. The color saturation is really nice and the quality of the paper feels very high-end.
Printer Settings
To get the best possible prints, it’s important to make sure you have your printer settings set up correctly. Three settings to check:
- You’ll want to make sure the quality setting is set to the “best” or “highest” setting available.
- You’ll want to make sure you’ve set the paper type on your printer i.e. glossy, matte etc.
- Scale – most often, you’ll probably want to print at 100% but you can also scale “to fit” a different paper size or change the percentage as desired. Just make sure to start with a larger size print and go smaller rather than larger to maintain quality.
Color issues
Because colors can vary from monitor to monitor and printer to printer, I’ve set up test color swatches which can be downloaded for free so you can make sure you like the colors before your purchase.
Printing at a Local or Online Printer
There are numerous places where you can get inexpensive prints made. As I try out more and more places I will update my recommendations here. Definitely let me know which places you like and don’t like!
Of all the places I’ve tried so far, I was very happy with the prints I got from Shutterfly.