How To Use Our Layout Guidelines in Adobe Photoshop

In this video, we will show you how to use our layout guidelines in Photoshop and place your art so you will have the perfect printed piece. PsPrint has more than 150 layout guidelines to make it easier for you to design your printed piece. For the sake of this video, we are going to use a horizontal, greeting card layout guideline. Select the greeting card dimension that works for you and download the front and back of your greeting card. Using Photoshop, open the layout guidelines. Select Crop Box, and make sure that the Resolution is set to at least 300 dpi and color mode is set to CMYK color. When viewing the guideline in Photoshop you will see the bleed indicated by the red area, a black dotted line for the cut line, the blue line for safety and the information box for designing with borders. The dotted line in the middle is the score line where your greeting card will be folded. Pull your guidelines to mimic the cut line and safety lines on all four sides, as well as a guide for the score line. Guidelines for the bleed area are not necessary, but please ensure the back ground of your design reaches all the way to the end of the bleed area to ensure your final piece does not contain unwanted white areas after being cut down in production.  Also, make sure to set your border requirements if you wish to include a border in your design. Take note that the top panel orientation of this layout guideline is upside down. Of course, you can create your design right side up for viewing purposes, but please ensure this panel gets rotated 180 degrees before submitting, so when the card is printed and folded it will be right-side up. You can now turn off the layout guideline layer and begin creating your design. Feel free to keep this layer for easy reference though. Once your design is complete and the top panel is rotated on the front, you can then delete the guideline layer, so it does not get accidentally printed in your piece. When you are ready to design the back, or what will be the inside of your greeting card, open the layout guideline for the back the same as you did for the front. You can mimic the same guidelines as before, but take note that the orientation can all be submitted right side up for this side. This is an example of a properly laid out greeting card file. And here is what the final piece will look like printed and folded. If you any more questions, please call our expert customer service team at 800.511.2009