Printing your finished card, frames and photo books

Save a PNG first

Printing starts with the Save image button. Press it and the whole card is downloaded as one PNG. It crops to every sticky note and drawing on the board, not just the visible part, so the file is the same whether you save from a phone or a computer.

There is no separate PDF or print button. Everything about printing is done with this PNG. Renaming the file to something like “Minji birthday card” makes it easy to find later.

One more thing. Save after everyone has written, but save once before that too. This is a free service run by one person and permanent storage cannot be promised. Once the file is in your hands, it lasts regardless of the service.

Check the aspect ratio first

This is where printing most often goes wrong. A canvas card has no fixed ratio. Depending on where the notes were placed it may come out wide or tall. Open the saved PNG and look at its width and height first.

Photo paper has fixed ratios. If they do not match, the printing app either crops the edges or adds white bars top and bottom. Crop, and someone's note in a corner disappears. Add bars, and the picture shrinks. Decide which you prefer in advance, and if possible lay out the notes to the print ratio while decorating, which is the cleanest.

The list layout stacks messages downward, so it is almost always very tall. Past twenty people it is hard to fit on one sheet. Printing the list layout is covered below.

Recommended sizes

• 4x6 or 5x7 photo (palm size): ten people or fewer, with three or four notes per row. Any more and the text becomes too small to read. For slipping into a gift box or carrying in a wallet.
• A4: the safe default. Text stays readable up to about fifteen people. Any local print shop or home printer can do it, and A4 frames are everywhere.
• A3 or poster: twenty or more people, or for an office wall or the back of a classroom. Ask a local print shop for a poster print. The bigger the print, the more the resolution of the PNG matters.
• Frame: put the photo print or A4 sheet in a frame. The inner edge of the frame hides a few millimeters, so leave room around notes near the border.
• Photo book: put the card PNG on one page of a photo book in a printing app and fill the other pages with photos from that day. It also suits a list card split across several pages.

When the text gets too small

On screen you can zoom in; paper cannot. Twenty notes on one A4 sheet turns each letter into a grain of rice. Before printing, open the PNG, size it on screen to the actual print size, and read the smallest text. If you cannot read it there, you cannot read it on paper.

There are three fixes. Print larger, make the notes bigger while decorating and ask people to use a readable font for long messages, or split it across several sheets. Handwriting fonts look nice on screen but are the first to become unreadable when printed small.

Check the resolution of the PNG itself. If the file is a few thousand pixels wide, A3 is fine; around a thousand pixels, even A4 goes blurry. If the notes are clustered in a small area the file crops small too, and in that case a smaller print is actually sharper.

Margins and color differences

Print shops and photo apps trim the edges a little. Notes right against the edge of the PNG can get cut, so leave the border area a bit empty while decorating, or choose the “add margin” option in the app. A margin also looks less cramped in a frame.

Colors differ between screen and paper. The screen shows light, the paper takes ink, so light pastels come out lighter and the translucent look of the highlighter almost disappears. A dark background can take so much ink that the paper buckles. For an important print, do one test copy before the real order.

Print the list layout in parts

The list layout saves as one very tall PNG. Print that as is and the ratio is wrong and the text shrinks to the size of a fingernail. Rather than cutting a long file in an editing app, scroll down a bit at a time and take several screenshots, which is far easier.

When capturing, align the edges so no message is cut in half. Four or five messages per sheet on several A4 pages reads well and fits a photo book exactly. Keep the full PNG separately too. The split prints are for reading; the original is for keeping.

Checklist before printing

1. The deadline has passed and nobody else is going to post.
2. The PNG is saved and opened, and the notes in all four corners are in it.
3. The ratio of the PNG was compared with the ratio of the print size.
4. The smallest text was read on screen at the actual print size.
5. No note sits right on the edge, or the margin option was chosen.
6. For multiple copies, one test print was done first.
7. The original PNG is kept separately from the prints.

Things to watch out for

• Messages added after printing do not appear on paper. Anyone with the link can keep writing, so announce “printing now” in the group chat before you print.
• Each note carries the author's name. If anyone used a real name, think twice before hanging it somewhere public like an office wall.
• Glossy photo paper reflects light and can make text hard to read. For a card with a lot of text, matte reads better.
• If you plan to print, fixing the layout while decorating is the surest way. See the layout patterns in Decorating ideas.