Not surprising. The eye is exquisitely sensitive to small, high-contrast displacements. When Apple was talking about their “Retina display”, they were referring only to the baseline acuity of the eye (which is indeed somewhere in the ballpark of 300 dpi at arm’s length). But in fact, the eye can see something like 10x that resolution, depending on the circumstances (this is called Vernier acuity). A few-pixel “thorn”, as you describe, could be very visible even at 1200 dpi, at least if you knew what to look for.
We’re straying off-topic, I’m sure you’re aware of this, but I’ll just add this for others as they often think there’s a direct correlation between Dots Per Inch (DPI) and Pixels Per Inch (PPI). There isn’t. They’re two completely different things. Zoom into a 1200 DPI image on a Retina display so each ‘dot’ = one ‘pixel’ and you’ll be looking a minute fraction of the entire image.
Thees two articles give a good overview of the differences:https://99designs.com/blog/tips/ppi-vs-dpi-whats-the-difference/
https://www.andrewdaceyphotography.com/articles/dpi/
@Johnny L.A.
Don’t worry about anything I’ve said in the my last few posts, unless you’re really curious about the technical aspects of graphic design (which I know just enough about to make printable work). As I’ve said before, you’re doing fine. Just resize your image and you’re good to go!
@Johnny L.A.
Another pat on the back for your work. Yes, there’s things to be tweaked as far as text and layout, but you’ve got something to be darn proud of! You have a good eye and ideas. Just add a little more technical and copy writing skills and you could be looking a new, additional career! But caution, despite what people say, making a hobby into a job you love is near impossible.
Back in the day, I created some in-house ads for the store I was running and when two of the friends/clients of my boss saw them, they offered to submit them to some ad agencies they worked with. I declined because I knew that having to do ad work on demand would kill any creativity and joy I had up until that point.
Someone here would probably do the work for you and send you the final file (PDF or whatnot). It’d be pretty simple and take 5 minutes. The internet is great for sharing one job between several people.
In terms of the copy, the pronouns didn’t agree toward the end. It spoke of “We offer this” and then finished with “I do this”. Maybe they should both be either “I” or “We”.
I dropped the linked image into Photoshop and found that the aspect ratio is 5:8.882. If I resize to 5:8, the text gets cut off.
When submitting something for printing, it has to match the parameters of the template, in this case 5.12" x 7.12" for a finished 5" x 7" card.
@Johnny L.A.
You have to either redo your card with a 5.12" x 7.12" template or it may be easier for you to use the VistaPrint design template and drop your image as a background and add your text.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll tell you, if my business was enabling people with no graphics experience to make their own products, I’d have an interface where people with no graphics experience could make their own products! (i.e., I’d have a ‘make it fit’ option.)
First of the month, so my job will be busy for the next couple/few weeks. I’ll try starting from scratch per suggestions. To recap: Read the link find out where Photoshop Elements has a ‘canvass’ option and set it to 5.12 x 7.12 inches. Upload the image into it. Try it at Vistaprint.
VistaPrint and I’m sure the other services mentioned, have a design your own option. In VistaPrint it’s next to the box where you upload your full design. I played around with it and you still have to size the image to the correct dimensions, but the text options are just like Publisher allowing you to add and move text anywhere you want.
Oh, and Happy New Year to you and everyone here!
Good Luck and don’t give up!
We keep telling him he has to re-size his original image. It’s already a Photoshop file and (depending on version) it’s probably as simple as clicking “Image” on the upper tab, then selecting “Canvas size” in the drop down. Make it 5.125 (5 1/8”) by 7.125 (7 1/8”). Then go back to the image. Move or stretch the two ‘graphic elements’ (feet, and whatever that colorful thing is at the bottom). Edit and reposition the text. Done! SAVE the file. Then SAVE AS a pdf. Send pdf to printer. Project complete.
Or just start over. It’s not a complex layout. Open a new file with dimensions 5.125 by 7.125 inches. Copy/paste those two graphics onto it or whatever was done to make the first file. Then type in the text. Again, two saves and done.
Note that the final piece will be cut to 5 by 7 but not necessarily exactly 1/8” from each edge. Cutting may be slightly different for each piece in the run. So while the full bleed elements (the feet and perhaps that other image) must extend to the outer edges, the important stuff (the text) should be no less than 1/4” from any edge. That’s the “safety zone” which ensures that these things don’t end up objectionably close to the final trim.
Yes, the thumbnail of the image shows the full image. When I drag it into the design box, it’s cropped. When I try to make it smaller, the cropped image gets smaller but the missing parts are still missing. So it looks like the only way to get the full image is to start from scratch in Photoshop Elements with white space around the edges.
No white space around the edges! Just create a properly sized canvas. As above, your image must be bigger than the final cut dimensions in order for the artistic elements to print from edge to edge and not leave a white border after the paper is cut to final size. This is what is called “full bleed”.
So create a new project and in the setup make the image size 5.125” by 7.125”. If the Size shows in pixels rather than inches, just click on the unit (pixels) and you’ll get a drop down menu allowing you to select inches.
Once you have an image of the proper size, all your other problems with printing will disappear.
In addition, never put a border around anything you print professionally, unless it’s more than 1/2" away from the edge or more than 1/2" wide. As I said above, the cutting and the printing can be 1/16" or more off. Doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you have a 1/4" border, it can be 5/16" on one side and 3/16" on the other, and it’s definitely noticeable even to the untrained eye, especially when you get to business card size.
I’m not understanding. My image is too large for the size I chose. (I’ll use the 4" x 6" as lingyi suggested.) If I want the whole image to fit, wouldn’t I need something outside of the image that gets cropped when I move it into the template? 
Let me get this straight: I open a new project in Photoshop (I’ll look up how to do that), define the page as 4.125" x 6.125". Put the image in the page. (I’ll look up how to do that, too.) Then when I import the .pdf image to Vistaprint or Printplace, the whole image will be visible without cropping. Only, I don’t understand how that could be if the image is larger than the stock by .125" for the ‘full bleed’.
Any mega-print-service that operates almost entirely off online orders such as Vistaprint has templates free to download on their site. They will always have one available that will work in Photoshop (even if it’s a PDF that you import into Photoshop). This template will be the correct size, with bleed, that they want you to use. It will have easy to read instructions as well as simple line highlights showing you precisely where your image will be trimmed during the printing process. Simply find their templates, download, and use their template to design.
Your copy is too wordy. I’m sure she wants to cover her butt with the legal stuff but why is that necessary on what appears to be some kind of ad card? That should be discussed after they decide they are interested in working with her. It is not a selling point. If it must be there, make it smaller than the text that you are actually trying to sell people with. Don’t put another selling point (we will come to your home) after the wordy legal copy nobody is going to read past. Hierarchy. It’s important.
Also, the #1 failure in amateur design is the margins. Your margins are ALWAYS too small. A quarter inch is not enough. A half inch: just barely enough. And the text is frequently too big. Never go larger than 10pt on body text unless you’re marketing to 5 year olds or 85 year olds. Given that she specializes in elder care, yeah, you might need the 12pt text in this rare case.
For the record, I am a professional designer so this is literally my job. Your work is better than the average amateur. You can do this in Photoshop (though not recommended). Make sure to save as a print-quality PDF. Not a web-quality PDF. And ALSO for the record, for a mere $50 I’d have professionally made the entire file for you so you wouldn’t have any of these headaches.
Make sure they’re consistent. A few years ago after a Black Rock Ranger was blinded by a laser I drew up artwork for a button that was yellow with the laser warning symbol in red and Don’t lase me, bro above and below the beam in black. The intent was to have the beam bleed off of the right edge and I submitted it with the beam (only) extending into the bleed.
I ordered a small batch (not at VistaPrint) mainly to make sure the words could be read on a 1" button. They could so I ordered the big batch from the same outfit and whoever handled the order shrank the image a bit so the beam stopped in the printable area making the type smaller and harder to read. :mad:
I think we’re just talking past each other. Your “project” seems to have 3 parts:
[ol]
[li]a pair of feet[/li][li]a colorful graphic at the bottom, and[/li][li]some text[/li][/ol]
The first 2 are presumably “images” from some source. Let us not call your completed project (feet, graphic, text) “the image” - that is not the intent here, and by using it and trying to warp it into a different size, your problems are just continuing. Do NOT try to place that into your new project.
So yes, open a new Photoshop project, and set the size to 4.250 x 6.250 - that gives you 1/8" (0.125") all the way around, for the trim margins. (Sorry, I mis-stated earlier - you need 1/8" on each side of the 6", and 1/8" above and below the 4", so overall it needs to be 1/4 inch larger than the final sizes.)
Now add - import - place your feet graphic. Presumably you already did this once in your original project, so just do the same thing again. Now move and stretch as needed to achieve the look you want. Be sure that the top and bottom extend at least to, or beyond, the top and bottom of your project.
Do the same with that colorful graphic - place and stretch/shrink it to look like it does in your original attempt, or however else you want it to look.
Now add your text. Type it in or paste it then edit it for the usual punctuation, size, etc.
Remember that the printer will print a large piece of paper with your entire complete image on it exactly as it looks to you in Photoshop and then cut a 4x6 card out of it. As we all keep saying, that cut will not necessarily be 1/8" in from every edge. High speed cutters aren’t that precise. So you need some “safety space” around the important parts of your project. In your case that’s the text. Because it really doesn’t matter exactly where the toes, or the knees, get trimmed. A little higher, a little lower, no big deal, it still shows all the way to the edge. But it does matter if some of your text gets cut off. So be sure your text is actually at least 1/4" from any edge. That allows for the expected 1/16 to 1/8 shift of the cutter, and still leaves your text aesthetically separated from any edge.
Now SAVE the PSD file. If the printer visualizes any problems with the proof, you need to make any changes in this PSD. Then also SAVE AS a pdf. Send the PDF to the print house and get a proof. I think it will be perfect now. Good luck and feel free to ask any specific questions that I may have confused you with!
Thank you for the clarification, CannyDan.
To clarify on my part, my ‘project’ only has two things: The entire image of the feet and flower, and the text. Actually, each line of text is separate; but aside from that it’s just a picture and the text.
I agree. I didn’t want to put it there, but she insisted because that’s what the presenter at her certification training did. Once she makes up her mind, there’s no changing it. In fact, she doesn’t even know I’m doing this. She just printed off the text (slightly different from what I have) on bright pink paper, and I’m going to use the guillotine at work to cut the pages in half. I just thought I’d have 100 postcards made up to see if she likes them. If I tell her I’m doing this, she’ll tell me not to. I’ll re-size the text when I hve time to get back to it.
To late to edit: She knows I was (note past tense) I was ‘playing around, just to see if I could do it’, but she doesn’t know I actually want to have some printed.
Then it’s a piece of cake! Create the new file in the correct size. Add and manipulate the graphic image as described above. Add your text. Stay inside the invisible safety zone. (Or add “guide lines” to help you visualize it. Google Photoshop guide lines for specifics but it’s trivially easy. ) Save and Save and hand off to the printer.
I was making a similar card this morning at work. Mine is 5x7, double sided. Each side contains at least 25 ‘graphic elements’ (images, shapes, gradients, etc.) and a dozen separate ‘text elements’. The longest part was finding appropriate images (mostly from my own photography) and editing/cutting them down to leave the part desired (like a pelican head). I invested maybe 2 hours and I’ll need to put in another couple tweaking the aesthetic choices I made. Maybe tomorrow. The learning curve wasn’t terribly steep and the techniques, once learned, are cumulative. So don’t be discouraged! A little fiddling with this project and you’ll be ready to try something more ambitious next time.
Twenty years ago I was using Ulead PhotoImpact on a PC. I got pretty good at it, but I was only doing things for web pages I was making. I got Photoshop (Elements) several years ago, but I don’t know how to use it because I never need to use it. I can open a picture with it and add text to it (like for making a meme). I can’t even put two pictures into one picture. (Heh. I just thought of how I used to do paste-ups of radar cross section data with an X-Acto knife and spray adhesive back in the '80s/'90s. 
)
Ah, the good ol’ days where everything was physical. Circa 1990 I took a series of classes leading to a tech writer’s certificate as San Jose State. One of the classes including printing basics so we didn’t sound like idiots interacting with the printer. One of our projects was to make a two-sided bi-fold flyer for some hypothetical company and I opted for a public timetable for a fictional overnight train between NYC and Chicago. A friend of mine was using me as a technical consultant for a Call of Cthululu RPG adventure where the players are in Arkham, Mass. at midnight. I figured he could use the timetable as props for the players.
I’d found some stock images and set the type using an old ITEK typesetter that had been donated to the college and was just finishing the second side’s master when the instructor came by. “Say, you’re pretty good at this.”
“As a political activist I’ve done this before.” Handing him the just completed master I want on, “Now we’re in uncharted territory; I’ve never actually shot a plate.”
I did shoot the two plates but had to watch him mount them in the AB Dick printer and run off about fifty copies, then I got them back to run them through the folding machine. They came out pretty good if I say so myself. The instructor kept a half-dozen to show off as did I; the rest went to the gamemaster who was duly impressed.