Those who use Photoshop for labels, this may help!

First of all, Mods can you please delete my other thread entitled "Printing at Kinkos, quick question". I tried deleting it and I guess I cannot. I think this thread will better whereas the title may direct people here for help!


All those who use Photoshop and would like an easy way to add multiple labels per printed page and be ready for either your own printer or Kinkos:


Make your label in Photoshop with an "image size" equal to what you want the label to be. For mine, I chose 3"x5" @ 300DPI because I felt it covered an appropriate amount of the bottle. Once your image is designed, save it as a Jpg. Open the Jpg file in photoshop and under the file menu select "automate" and then "picture package". This will give you the opportunity to select a pre-designed layout or edit the current layout to customize. None of the pre-designed layouts matched the size label I needed, so I opted to edit the layout. I selected 8.5" x 11" paper size, the default I think was 8x10. The layout is basically a template of the paper size you've selected and fields called "zones" which represent an instance of your image - in this case, the label. The zones are independently sized. In this case, the zone size you want to make will reflect the label size you are making - for me, it was 3x5. I then deleted all current zones, which gave me a blank page to start adding my custom zones. I then added 4 zones equal to the size of my labels - 3x5. I positioned away from the edges of the page and with enough space to cut out between them after I print. I then selected a resolution of 300 DPI (at least 200 is probably necessary or you might get a blurry images). I clicked "ok" and the layout was made (automated). Basically, photoshop just goes through the whole process of resizing, reorienting, and positioning your images on a canvas equal to the paper size. I then test printed to make sure everything was right. It looked perfect so I saved this new image as a "PDF" file and copied it to a thumb drive. I will bring this Kinkos and print the PDF in as many pages as I need, 4 labels per page. Works like a charm and takes a total of about 5 minutes!

Thanks for the help with this.

Note: You may have to download the picture package plugin free from Adobe if not already installed in your photoshop.

Going to see if I can get my wife to make up some labels. She likes doing photo editing and stuff so I'm hoping I can talk her into a fun little project. Also helps that she works at a UPS store and we can get cheap prints

mjmac85 said:

Going to see if I can get my wife to make up some labels. She likes doing photo editing and stuff so I'm hoping I can talk her into a fun little project. Also helps that she works at a UPS store and we can get cheap prints

Click to expand...

by cheap, do you mean free?

its always best when you have access to a cheap or free excellent printer at your disposal.

I honestly don't know what the policy is. More importantly I don't know how they really handle employee printing besides what the policy states. I do know I don't need to use my own ink printing a ton of labels. Plus they have those fancy bulk cutters and stuff for easy cutting.

mjmac85 said:

I honestly don't know what the policy is. More importantly I don't know how they really handle employee printing besides what the policy states. I do know I don't need to use my own ink printing a ton of labels. Plus they have those fancy bulk cutters and stuff for easy cutting.

Click to expand...

sweet. good luck with it. a crisp sharp edge on a label lends a nice commerical look. the worst thing is that little fine white line that creeps into some labels.

what i actually do is print my labels with a 1/16" border such that my guidelines for cutting are 1/32" in on each size. It gives me a little wiggle room. The thickness of my cutting blade is 1/64" so as long as I am on my guideline, i'll be certain not to have that thin white line of label death

I will also add the following tip - this last batch of labels, I set the grid spacing to the minimum and I joined all 4 labels on the page in the centers... so it looks like the attached pic. This minimizing the cutting necessary for me, only having to cut once horizontally and once vertically between labels after trimming the perimeter.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you use Illustrator, step and repeat (the term for putting multiple images up on a sheet for printing) is much easier. You can also add crop marks for easy cutting. Just make the design 1/8" bigger than you need it on all sides. (thats called bleed). Then, just draw a small line at the corners of each label where you want to cut.

Thanks for this post. It helped a lot. I found that for it to work on my newer macbook pro running photoshop CS5 I had to set photoshop to run in 32bit mode for the picture package to work.