Printing at Home vs. a Print Shop
Once you have a print-ready file, there are really only two ways to turn it into paper: your own printer, or someone else's. Neither is the "correct" choice — they trade off differently, and which one makes sense can change piece by piece.
Paper weight
This is the first real constraint, and it's different for each option.
- At home, your printer sets the ceiling. Most home printers handle up to about 200–250 gsm reliably; push heavier and it can jam. Check your printer's manual for the heaviest stock it's rated to feed before buying paper.
- At a shop, you're not limited by a feed mechanism. A smooth white or cream card stock around 250–350 gsm (roughly 100–130 lb cover) is a safe, common choice for invitations and cards — heavier feels more formal, and costs a little more to mail.
If the weight you want is heavier than your printer can take, that alone settles the question in favor of a shop.
Getting the print dialog right (home printing)
Three settings matter more than the rest, and getting any one wrong changes the result more than the paper does:
- Scale: "Actual size" or 100% — never "fit to page." Fit-to-page shrinks the design slightly and leaves an uneven white border around it, which also means the bleed no longer lines up with the paper's edge.
- Quality: best or photo, not draft. Draft mode prints visibly grey and banded — fine for a proof copy, not for the piece you're sending out.
- Paper type: set to match your card stock, not "plain paper." This tells the printer how much ink to lay down and how long to let it dry; the wrong setting either starves the print of ink or leaves it smudging.
What to tell a print shop
Sending the file as-is is enough — don't re-export, screenshot, or "convert" it first, since each of those steps can quietly change the resolution or strip the bleed. Beyond that, three lines cover what a shop needs to hear:
- "Trim to the crop marks."
- "There's an eighth-inch bleed."
- The finished size you want.
If color accuracy matters to you — a specific shade of burgundy, say — ask for a printed proof before committing to the full run. It's usually inexpensive, and it's the only way to see the real ink on the real paper before it's final.
Why the color might look different either way
Design files are RGB, which is how screens display color. Printers work in CMYK, and the conversion between the two shifts some colors — pale and very saturated tones the most. Screens are also backlit and paper isn't, so a printed piece normally looks a little darker and softer than what you saw on screen. That's expected, not a flaw in the file — and it's true whether you print at home or send it to a shop.
When a shop is the only real option
Two cases push the decision past preference:
- Large format. An 18×24" welcome sign is not something a home printer produces — that's a copy shop or an online large-format printer, usually on foam board (light enough for an easel, stiff enough not to curl). Ask for a matte finish if the venue is bright; gloss reflects light and photographs badly.
- A large batch of small, identical pieces. Place cards, table numbers and favor tags can be laid out several to a sheet — the cards butted against each other so a single cut serves the card on both sides of it. That arrangement is built for a shop's cutting equipment more than a home setup, and it's the difference between a hundred place cards costing ten sheets instead of a hundred.
Trimming, either way
A craft knife and a metal ruler, or a paper guillotine, cut a straight edge along the crop marks. Scissors wander — even a careful hand drifts enough over a few inches to notice on a stack of a hundred cards.
Promuse exports every piece at the resolution and bleed a shop expects, and the small pieces — place cards, table numbers, favor tags — already come laid out several to a sheet, ready to print either way.
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