I have a question about having sticker made, please help

[heydo6]

I would like to have a few hundred small stickers made 1"x1" or so. I sent high quality pictures to place printrunner but for some reason that not good enough.
I thought they wanted a jpeg so I converted the file but not the problem.

I would upload a picture but it's normally not easy on forums. It's a simple sticker that that says "Stanley Tools" very few colors.

What am I missing here? Please help

[heydo6]

re-reading the couple email with customer service. They mentioned design team in the first email. I never gave that much thought because I have a design.
Do they just want me to pay them extra to take my pictures and turn them into "print-ready file"? how long would that take?

My pictures of Stanley Tools is of a sticker I had made locally. It has a tape measure next to it in 2 photos for length and width. I was thinking from that they could make the stickers to size very easy?

[markw]

Hello haydo6 and welcome to the ArtRage forums :)
Yes, turning digital work into something that can be printed can be a tricky job the first couple of times.
But first and foremost when using any printing service is to know exactly what file requirements they have.
And then create and prepare your artwork accordingly.
But as file requirements will vary from print shop to print shop any advise given on a forum such as here can only be very general at best.
So I would strongly advise talking directly with the printers in question about what they need.
Most print houses will have a page on their websites giving info on how files should be submitted and a quick look on PrintRunner’s website shows they too have such a page which you can find here: https://www.printrunner.com/file-preparation-guide.html

[Somerset]

Hallo heydo6!

I agree with markw. One basic problem is that what you create with ArtRage and other software on screen uses the colours of light to mix colours. It's basic colours are red, green and blue (RGB - additional colour mixing). For printing the colours of your image need to be converted to body colours, that means physical colours. It's basic colours are cyan, magenta, yellow (the complementary colours of RGB) and additional black (because true black can't be mixed with cyan, magenta and yellow). This is called CMYK (subtractive colour mixing). But ArtRage has no colour management at all. So this convertion has to be made with image editing software like Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Paintshop Pro or Krita (GIMP can't convert to CMYK).

And it's even a little more complicated, because, depending on the stuff your work shall be printed on (different sorts of paper, cardboard, foil...), special colour profiles will be needed. Colour profiles are files that enclude the data that are needed for optimal printing on certain surfaces. For example because some papers absorb more colour than others, some papers have a verry dull surface, so that the black must be strenghtend to look not too faint, and so on). Only the printers know what profiles they use.

For stickers, if they are not rectangular, a clipping path is needed, so that the printers can cut it to the intended form.

So you see, it's a little more complicated, and it's better to talk to the printers, what they need to do the job. This would be the better and even the more economic way, because printing is expensive, and bad printing can't be reversed.