Downloads & Printing Help and Tips

Our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page can be found here.

Downloads

We offer most of our paper products as a fully completed high quality printable download with the same layout and background as the printed versions. We can also provide the same without a background (‘No Background’) if you would like to print onto your own parchment or other background. Digital versions are useful if you would rather print yourself – or even take to a local printing shop for printing. These are also useful if you would rather receive your item without waiting for a postal delivery or in an emergency if your order delivery is delayed.

Download orders are normally processed within the same timeframe as our printed versions, but without the delivery or postage cost. Once processed, you will receive an email from us with your download link(s). We don’t email the images directly to you as attachments, but instead will make them downloadable from our website for a period of 30 days. When you click on your download link, your web browser will open and then display your image in your browser. These aren’t normally any larger than a few megabytes in size.

To save, simply drag and drop the image from your web browser onto your computer’s desktop or other location. If using a mobile device, you can use the browser’s ‘share’ or ‘save’ function to save to the device or to any included cloud storage, such as Apple’s iCloud Drive, Google Drive, etc. Images should save full size (or the same size they were created). If the saved image quality doesn’t look right, please check that the file size closely matches the file size we provide with your download link(s). Your browser or device may have reduced the file size and/or quality. This is not something our server does. If you experience any issues, please do let us know.

Printing

Once you have a copy of your image saved, you can now use or print as required. If you ordered a coat of arms .png image on its own (not against a parchment or other background) it will be a ‘transparent PNG image’. PNG images are high quality and you should be able to expand to a larger size without any significant or noticeable loss of quality (up to A3 in size). The ‘transparency’ allows the areas around (and any inner areas) to display any background it’s placed against to show through, so you can place the image against your own background and it will show through.

If you open the image in an ‘image viewer’ on a computer or device, you may see a plain black background (or even a plain white or other colour) show through the transparent areas. This is just the way they display transparent images, so you haven’t received an image against a plain black or white background. Should you want to see a plain white background every time you see the image, simply save the .png image as a .jpg image and the transparency will be replaced with a plain white background.

When you are ready to print, you can use any good quality inkjet printer. In order to do so, we strongly recommend that you print at 100% scale or ‘borderless’ (if printing a completed product with an edge to edge background), otherwise it will print with a narrow white edge all around the printed area. This is fine if the finished item will be displayed in a frame with a mount (assuming the aperture of the mount is created slightly smaller than the inner size of the printout). For full edge to edge (borderless) printing, we recommend using matt photo paper and a photo quality print mode. Although these are not ‘photos’, the photo print setting will produce the best quality printing.

If printing onto parchment paper, or similar, we recommend that you print using a standard paper with a high quality (inkjet) setting (not photo quality) for best results.

You can also print with a colour laser printer onto normal printer paper, thicker paper or matt photo paper, but bear in mind that most laser printers don’t have a borderless setting, so it will leave a small white edge all around the printed image. There may be another option available to you if wanting to use a laser printer for ‘borderless’ prints. Many laser printers can print slightly larger than A4 size, such as US Legal size. This is 8.5 inches wide instead of 8.25 inches for A4. They should also be able to print on a slightly longer than A4 length, often up to 14 inches, so 14 x 11.5 inches (US legal letter size).

If you have any A3 sized paper, you can trim this down to 14 x 11.5 and print onto the larger sheet of paper in A4 size. However, you will still have a very small white area on each side because there is no borderless printing, but the printed area will still be slightly wider (you may want to reduce the printed ‘A4’ length slightly to compensate for this. Finally, you will need to trim the finished laser printout so that its total size is that of A4 (297 x 210 mm). Any thin white areas left around the edges (i.e. 2-3 mm) should be hidden underneath the picture frame rim.

If buying paper specially for the job, do check your printer’s manual for its maximum paper thickness or weight (i.e. up to 180-220 gsm).

Please note that we are unable to provide help or support for printing. The help and tips provided here is for your own information, which we hope you find useful.