Do it Yourself ~ Print your own product labels

After being featured in the Customer Spotlight with OnlineLabels.com for our product labeling, we have been contacted by many small businesses asking us to share how we have achieved the look of ‘professional’ labels.

When I was researching printers, I found the Canon Pixma iP4300 to be highly rated and reasonably priced, less than $100.00. It prints in resolutions of up to 9600 x 2400 dpi, printing in microscopic picoliters for exceptional detail.  It also has five ink tanks, which helps keep the cost down as you only have to replace individual ink tanks when they run out, and offers borderless printing, which allows me to print labels right to the edge.

It took me some time experimenting with the settings to get my labels crisp and sharp, and this is what I have found works the best for the white glossy labels, and the clear matte labels that we get from OnlineLabels. These settings will NOT work for clear glossy labels, and I do not know about the plain white non-gloss labels.

When printing labels with the Canon Pixma iP4300 printer:

Under Main Setting Tab, for Media Type choose Photo Paper Pro

For Printer Quality choose Custom, then click Set, in the box that opens up click Diffusion and slide the number bar to #1, then click Okay to save setting.

For Color Intensity I choose Manual, then click Set, under Brightness I choose Dark in the drop down box, then Okay to save the setting.  Normal or Manual setting will work also, I prefer to have the most colorful label I can print.

On Effects Setting Tab, I check Image Optimizer for sharpest printing results.

For borderless printing, click the Page Set Up Tab, in Page Layout check the Borderless Printing box, then under Amount of Extension, slide the bar all the way to the right.