Dispatches From Hellpeckersville-Prints

I was so happy with the way my piece turned out last week that I thought  why not go ahead and try to get a print made? How hard could it be? Well, if not hard it wasn’t exactly simple either. The fact that I had no damn clue what I was doing wasn’t exactly helpful, but I was willing to research my butt off. I see prints for sale, so I go into the sellers forums to who they use, why they like them, what’s what. I’m flying blind into these threads, seeing terminology like “giclee” that is apparently what I want, and I had no idea.

There are dozens of places that will do quality prints on canvas for you, but what it comes down to are options and pricing. First, I narrowed it down to the three places I saw the most positive comments (not reviews) about in the Etsy forums. From people who actually use these printers to sell their art. From there it was a matter of checking the options and pricing and I was settled. Now I need to scan my image.

I waste a day looking for specialty scanning, and oversize scanning before it dawns on me that Staples may have a big enough scanner and I call them. Yes, they do. How much? 83 cents. Oh, well then, cool. You need a thumb drive. How much? Five bucks. Oh, well, that’s cool too. because if this works out there’ll be more. Hopefully. After a huge, bombastic fight over the matter, Cleetus gets the thing scanned the next morning, It looks great. But it’s PDF I need j-peg.

There’s got to be an online converter for that right? Right. So I take the file and I upload it to the online converter and I make it a j-peg. Yay. Then I go bak to the print site and I upload it, oh pretty! I begin the order and get two-thirds of the way through and I am stymied by the cropping tool. Damn it. I am used to the stretchy boxes, not plus/minus! I keep losing my one kitty-cat’s nose. I finally get it right and then….I cannot find the mounting option I wanted. I send an e-mail and go to bed.

Well, it seems I couldn’t find that option because it isn’t available with the surface i picked, okay, let’s start over. I still have my crop, I still have my size, so I pick the other surface, now I have the option for the mount I wanted, everything is go. I click submit. Within the hour I get an e-mail with confirmation and I feel pretty good. But not for long. Oh, no.

This morning, I get up to find an e-mail that tells me my j-peg does not have enough DPI. Well, shit. Really? Now I have to go in search of a free converter that does higher quality conversions. Yes, there is software that does it, but no, I am not paying for it if I can find a simple one for free. And there it is, the seventh one I checked has a range of choices. I upload my PDF and hit convert on high. Then back to the print site to upload and custom crop to their specifications and send them a note that it’s there, and please let me know if it’s okay.

After about an hour I get an e-mail thanking me for submitting a new file, and telling me my order has gone back into production. I’m hoping that means it has high enough DPI? Cross your fingers for me, lol. I’m seriously considering getting a second one done in the other format for comparison’s sake. Any thoughts?