Printable Bookmarks Printing Tips

To have a lasting and good looking bookmark, read these tips!

Paper

Other than whether you use lamination or not, the type of paper you use will define how long your bookmark will last. Obviously, thin paper will bend and rip more easily, and thicker paper will keep their shape better.

Glossy paper, or photo paper, if available, is the best choice; it is durable and shiny (yay!). Unfortunately, glossy paper can be expensive, so live with thicker paper if you want to conserve money. It will not look as pretty as a bookmark on glossy paper, but at least it will be durable. Should you have none of these options available, you are stuck with plain white paper, neither durable or great, but good enough. When you have your type of paper chosen, feed it into your printer correctly, especially with one-sided glossy paper.

Sizing

Your printer prints so many dots per inch (2.54 cm). This is called the DPI (dots-per-inch), and is important when determining the quality of an image. Generally, professional print studios will produce works of at least 300 DPI. To compare, the screen in front of you is probably only 72 DPI or 96 DPI, a very low quality for a print (that is why web graphics look so bad usually). All our bookmarks are of at least 300 DPI, so one should not worry about the quality. The only possible trouble is how your computer interprets the sizes of these images when you print. We have tried our best to support all browsers and systems available, but if your image comes out the wrong size, you may have to use the newest browser version or enable features that you have disabled (such as CSS stylesheets and JavaScript).

Printing

Ensure that you have enough ink for the job. Some bookmarks use more ink than others, so be wary of this when choosing your bookmark. If you want the highest quality print you are able to achieve or instead decide to print a test, adjust the amount of ink and quality in your printer's settings if available. For a test print (which is a wise idea potentially), use normal white paper and "draft" or "low" quality modes. After a test, use the best quality if you want, but remember that it may consume a lot of ink.

Trimming

We doubt you would be willing to use a big piece of paper for a bookmark! You will probably want to cut off the excess white paper beyond the dotted line. (Kids: ask your parents or an older brother or sister for help). If you have a paper knife or a paper cutter, your bookmark will have straight edges! Otherwise, you are stuck with your plain old scissors and the steadiness of you hand. Be careful with sharp objects!

Laminating

If you can laminate your bookmark and encase it in hard plastic, you will have a long lasting bookmark!