Views on Vistaprint Pt. 5 - Combining Images into a Single File to Reduce Printing Costs

Images are naturally a common method of making a business card more attractive or professional looking. Vistaprint allows you to upload images and display them on both the front and reverse sides of the card. Once uploaded, images can be moved, resized and have a number of colour effects applied to them. An image need not just be your logo. You could have icons for your contact details, custom bullet points, pictures demonstrating your products or services or a self portrait. You could even design your whole card as an image, outside of Vistaprint, and upload it as a single object before printing it. It is that last technique that we will touch on in this article.

The downside of having an image rich business card from Vistaprint is, of course, cost. Vistaprint charge you a significant surcharge (typically about 30% of the base cost of the card) for each uploaded image on your printed card. But here's the good news: I'm going to tell you how to completely circumvent these additional charges and how, with some additional work, you can only be charged for printing a single image.

Warning: This technique is a relatively complex and time-consuming, relies heavily on methods decribed earlier in this series and involves some arithmetic and a significant amount of image preparation, outside of Vistaprint. The upside is that the savings are potentially considerable. I reduced the cost of two hundred and fifty business cards, on a twenty-one day order, from over £35 to less than £13 by combining seven images into one, using the method below. That's a saving of over sixty-five percent!

Combining Images into a Single File

The first step is to design your business card in Vistaprint, using as many uploaded images as you want, arranged however you choose. Next, save this card and then save a copy of the card under a different name. We will work in this copy and preserve the original in case any errors ocurr in the re-design process.

Delete any text object that overlays or comes close to an image. Then save a bitmap image of your card, as described in this earlier article. This image will be used as a template for creating a single image combination of all the images used in your card, at the highest possible resolution, ie. the best possible image quality.

Load the bitmap image into Microsoft Paint. Now, in a separate copy of Paint, load the image you had to scale up the least or down the most, in order for it to appear the correct size on your business card. We will refer to this as the hi-res image. As an example, I used seven images for my card, a logo that I had turned into a watermark (as described in this article) and six icons which I use to illustrate different forms of media that I can be contacted on. These icons were taken from different sources and originally had different image sizes. I uploaded them as they were and scaled them in the Vistaprint card designer so that they showed as the correct size. The logo is obviously the largest image I used and the original image file I uploaded has the largest dimensions. However, as it fills most of the background of the card, I actually had to scale it up slightly, in order for it to appear the size I wanted. When I uploaded the contact icons, I had to scale all of them down somewhat, for them to appear properly. As it happens, the icon I had to scale down the most was the Skype icon, the white 'S' on the light blue background. In this example, this will be referred to as the hi-res image and the original file version of this image, that was uploaded to Vistaprint, should now be loaded into a separate copy of MS Paint.

Now, using the Select tool in Paint, click precisely on the highest point of the version of the hi-res image you have in the card image bitmap. Holding down the mouse button, move the bottom of the Select area to the precise lowest point of the hi-res image and release the mouse button. You may want to zoom the screen in to make this process easier. In the status bar at the bottom of the Paint window, second icon from the left, there should be an icon which is a dotted box outline with two arrows, one to the left pointing up and one below, pointing right. The figures to the right of this icon tell you the dimensions of the select area. The right hand one tells you the height, in pixels. This is the figure we are interested in. In my example, the figure is 45px.

Next, follow the same procedure for the original file for the hi-res image. You may be able to simply select the entire image, if the original image has no borders or other space or imagery around it. In my example, this was not the case. The height of the hi-res image, in my example of the original file, is 90px.

Okay, here comes the maths. Divide the height of the image in the original file by the height in the card bitmap image. In my example, this is co-incidentally very easy, as it is 90/45 which equals exactly 2. Your figure is likely to not be so precise but don't worry about this too much. Now multiply that number by 100 and store it in your calculator memory, or write it down. You now only need the figures before the decimal point.

In the card image bitmap (which we are using as the template for the combined images, remember) de-select any parts of the screen. You can do this by simply clicking on the 'Fill' icon, for example. Now click on 'Resize' and tick the 'Maintain aspect ratio' check box. Type the calculated figure into the 'Horizontal' text box. The same figure should be repeated below, in the 'Vertical' box. If not, type it in yourself. Click 'OK'. The whole image should now have been rescaled to match the resolution of the hi-res image. 

Copy the hi-res image from the orginal file and paste it over the lower quality image in the scaled card image bitmap. Now save the card image bitmap, with a different name. This file is now the combined image template.

You now need to re-scale all of the component images to match the resolution of the template image. (Sigh. I told you it was involved. Just keep thinking of the savings!) To do this, measure their heights in the template and their original files and calculate the scaling factor, as before. Then select the images from the original files and perform the re-scaling procedure using 'Resize', again, as you did earlier. Because you have a selection this time, only that selection will be re-scaled, not the entire image. Copy the selection and paste it into the template image, over the corresponding, lower resolution image. Repeat this procedure for all of your component images, saving under a different version name each time, in case of mistakes.
[Edit 17:25 20/09/2012 : I haven't done it in the illustration but don't forget to re-scale your main logo in the same way as all the other images!]
 Once this is done, you should hopefully have a combined image, suitable for uploading to Vistaprint! You may feel the need to do a little cleaning up of the image first, using the 'Eraser' tool or some other technique.

Don't be concerned that some of the images may appear to be of varying quality, they are at the maximum quality that they could be. Remember that you originally had them re-scaled in Vistaprint, where they appeared much smaller and it was hence more difficult to judge their resolution.

Open your original card design in Vistaprint. Save it under a different name. Delete all the images. Upload the template image to Vistaprint. The quality of the image as it is displayed should be the same as the original card design and, after a little re-scaling and moving around, it should align properly with the text and any other objects in the layout. Done!

When you come to print the card, you should note that you are now only being charged for a single image, and not for multiple images, as you were before. You're welcome!

This is the last of my articles on Vistaprint, for the moment. Next time we will talk about various strategies for getting the most value out of the business networking site, Linked In.


[Edit 30/03/2013]
You can now download the Combining Images into a Single File article as a printable PDF.